Illustration: Felix Lorioux's Le Buffon des Enfants

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about children's book illustrators.


Here's another post about an artist you've never heard of before, but you'll never forget once you look at his work! My pal Tony "Superslice" Mora gave me this book as a birthday gift. It's a real treasure.

Felix Lorioux was one of France's best loved artists, but he was a humble, quiet man who did little to promote himself beyond his home country. He was born in 1872 and began as a fashion designer. But his childlike sense of wonder led him to a career as a children's book illustrator. Walt Disney was impressed with his abilities and hired him to illustrate books for the French market based on Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphonies. It has been said that a Lorioux illustration of a goose in a sailor suit may have even been the inspiration for Donald Duck. Around 1934, Disney revoked the contract and brought the work in house. Presumably, Walt felt that Lorioux's illustrations were "off model" and wanted to standardize the look of the books featuring his characters. Ultimately, it was Disney's loss, not Lorioux's.


Lorioux went on to illustrate definitive editions of Perrault's Fairy Tales, Don Quixote, the Fables of La Fontaine and Robinson Crusoe. However, he was most at home painting delicate watercolors of the birds, flowers and insects in his garden. He imagined fantastic worlds populated by these little creatures. This book, "Le Buffon des Enfants: Les Insectes de Chez Nous" is one of his greatest works. Tony was fortunate enough to stumble across a deluxe edition from 1946 that was limited to only 2000 copies. The print quality is astounding. Lorioux's books are rarely seen in the United States. If there are any readers of this blog in France, we would appreciate information on this amazing artist, and scans of any of his work in your collection.

SELECTED ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
LE BUFFON DES ENFANTS













I don't have room on the blog to reproduce this entire book, but check out the way Lorioux incorporates his watercolors into the text of the book...


Over the years, many animated cartoons have been set in the tiny world of insects... Fleischer's Mr. Bug Goes To Town and Disney's "Woodland Cafe" and "The Grasshopper and the Ants" spring immediately to mind. There have been several recent CGI features in this sort of setting as well, and none of them comes anywhere close to the appeal and striking uniqueness of Lorioux's paintings (or those of Feodor Rojankovsky). Animation is a visual medium. Design matters.

If you found this to be useful, see also... Rojankovsky's Frog Went A-Courtin' / Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Voice Acting: The Stan Freberg Show 1957

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 4 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great biographies of important artists.


Daws Butler and Stan Freberg accept the
Emmy Award for "Time For Beany".
Archive supporter, Rich Borowy has been contributing some wonderful material to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Here's another one of his treasures... the premiere episode of the legendary short lived radio musical variety show created by Stan Freberg.

In the Summer of 1957, CBS debuted a comedy program to replace The Jack Benny Program. It starred Captiol recording artist Stan Freberg, with support from veteran voice artists like Daws Butler, Marvin Miller and June Foray. The show exhibited all aspects of Freberg's unique sense of humor from goofy cartooniness to biting satire. This episode contains liberal doses of both, and includes his classic riff on Cold War politics, titled "Los Voraces" ("The Greedy Ones"). Freberg's sharp wit and his refusal to accept commercials for cigarettes didn't endear him to advertisers, and the show was cancelled after only fifteen episodes. But it made an indelible mark on many fans in re-release on records.

This particular recording is unique, because it includes off-air introductions by Stan before the show and a pickup of a musical cue at the end. It's a tribute to the professionalism of the performers and the musical director, Billy May when you realize that this elaborate program was performed live from beginning to end in front of a studio audience.

Enjoy the genius of Freberg!

The Stan Freberg Show
(CBS Radio/July 9th, 1957)
(AAC Audio File / 90kbps-44.1kHz / Mono / 42 minutes / 30.25 mb)

Thanks for contributing this, Rich!

Fans of the great Stan Freberg won't want to be without this great four CD box set, The Tip of the Freberg, which includes many of his greatest recordings. Get it at Amazon!

If you enjoyed this article, you'll also want to check out these articles... Mel Blanc on Advertising, Profile of Carlo Vinci, John K on Flintstones Animators, Bugs Bunny In Coronet Magazine, Ward Kimball In Escapade Magazine, UPA Done Right, The Pencil Test of Art Babbitt's Best Scene, A Drawing Lesson From Walter Lantz, and Remembering Berny Wolf

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Illustration: Bozo And His Rocket Ship

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about 50s children's book illustrators.


In 1946, a young producer at Capitol Records, Alan Livingston was assigned the task of developing a children's line for the fledgling record company. He came up with the idea of a read-along record and book set featuring a circus clown named Bozo. The album, Bozo At The Circus sold over a million copies, and helped to push Capitol to the top of the charts.

Livingston went on to create read-along sets featuring DIsney, Lantz and Warner Bros characters, but the most successful line was the Bozo series. Voiced by Disney story and voice man, Pinto Colvig with music by Billy May, Livingston wrote and produced Bozo On The Farm, Bozo And The Birds, Bozo Under The Sea, and this one... Bozo And His Rocket Ship. All of the sets were re-released in the LP era, but this one was heavily edited, for obvious reasons. In this album, Bozo makes a survey of just about every ethnic stereotype imaginable. But that isn't the reason we're presenting it here. We're featuring the wonderful work of the illustrators, Norm McCabe and Cecil Beard.

McCabe was an animator at Warner Bros in the 30s and directed in the early 40s. After the war, he turned to commercial work and illustration. He returned to cartoon animation in the mid-1960s, animating the titles to The Pink Panther. He continued to work in the business until his death in 2006. Cecil Beard was an animator and story man at Disney and Columbia. He worked on the Fox & the Crow comic books with Jim Davis in the late 40s, and as an illustrator for Western Publishing in the 1960s. He passed away in 1986.

The most striking thing about these images are the compositions. Notice how the white of the page is used and how small windows in the backgrounds open onto other environments. There's some really clever use of perspective and depth cues here. Enjoy!





















If you found this to be useful, see also... Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courting, Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Filmography: Gandy and Sourpuss in Aladdin's Lamp

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


Over at John Kricfalusi's blog, All Kinds of Stuff, John posted an appreciation Gandy Goose and Sourpuss- the cartoon comedy team that were one of the inspirations for Ren & Stimpy.

I've long thought that the Gandy Goose cartoons are underappreciated. They're funny, well animated and have a great deal of variety. The early ones, in particular "Doomsday", have lavish production values. "Aladdin's Lamp" is a typical wartime short featuring the duo, and it includes a great jitterbug dance sequence by Carlo Vinci. Vinci's hand is evident throughout this short.









Gandy Goose & Sourpuss in
Aladdin's Lamp (Terry/1943)
(Quicktime 7 / 14.5 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

If you found this post to be interesting, you'll also want to check out our... Profile of Carlo Vinci, The Training Of A Golden Age Animator, Carlo Vinci Notes, The Terry-Toons Studio Tour, Tytla and Terry: Jeckyl & Hyde Cat, The Temperamental Lion 1940, Catnip Capers 1940, Jim Tyer's Barnyard Actor 1955 and Terrytoons Lobby Cards

Many thanks to John Kricfalusi for donating this great cartoon to our archive.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Biography: Milton Caniff and Norman Rockwell in Coronet

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about comics.


The Milton Caniff Estate recently loaned the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive copies of two issues of Coronet magazine from 1942 and 1947 to digitize. Here are three articles of interest to cartoonists and illustrators...



AMERICA'S PIONEER JAP FIGHTER
By Howard Whitman








NORMAN ROCKWELL: The People's Painter
By Jack H. Pollack






CONFESSIONS OF A COMIC STRIP ARTIST
By Milton Caniff





Thanks to John Ellis and the estate of Milton Caniff for sharing this with us!

If you enjoyed this post, see... Coronet Magazine December 1945, Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon Sunday Pages, Steve Canyon Dalies, People On Paper, Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One- Meet The Men Behind the Comics and Part Two- Studying Comic Strips, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, Propaganda Part One and Part Two, Dan Gordon's Superkatt, Rube Goldberg's Side Show and Alex Toth Model Sheets

STEVE CANYON TV SHOW


The Steve Canyon Special Edition DVD is out now! To order it and for more info on the Steve Canyon TV show, see... www.stevecanyondvd.blogspot.com

STEVE CANYON AT AMAZON

Fantagraphics has a great book on Caniff's career, and Checker has released year by year reprints of the classic Steve Canyon strip. Caniff was a master storyteller, and the first few years of Steve Canyon are examples of his genius at the height of its powers. Click on the pictures for more info.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Comics: Basil Wolverton On Cartoon Sounds

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.


Last week, archive supporter Marc Schirmeister stopped by with a stack of rare fanzines from the late 1960s and early 70s. Included among them were two great issues of Graphic Story Magazine devoted to Wolverton.


Here is an article Wolverton wrote in 1948 for the Daily Oregonian...



ACOUSTICS IN THE COMICS
By Basil Wolverton

The so called comic strip on my drawing board showed a heavy horse stepping on a bozo's bean. The horse was tramping on the guy's head in a delicate way, of course, so the situation would be more entertaining than grusome- depending on the reader's sense of humor. But, like an old silent movie, the cartoon needed something, and that something was sound. There had to be a heavily lettered word oozing out from the exact point of contact between the horse's hoofs and the man's head. Thus the reader, pronouncing that sound word to himself, would actually hear within his mind the excitingly comical noise that would eminate from such action.


Summoning both brain cells hurriedly together, I tried desperately to imagine just what sort of sound would ensue if a nag were to step on someone's skull. The word CRUNCH popped into my mind. Then CRONCH. Then CRANCH. I settled for CRANCH because somehow it seemed more refined. But before I could letter the word on the cartoon, I suddenly recalled my latest unhappy interview with the person who publishes my comic strips.


"I want realism!" he had bellowed. "No more of this wild imaginitive stuff that's causing some people to want to ban our comic books! From now on, get that realism in there, and your strips will be horribly funny! Then the readers will go into hysterics and laugh like crazy, and our books will be acclaimed the most laugh provoking on the stands!" That meant that an imaginative word like CRANCH was taboo. It was up to me to get the real sound word. I looked furtively about as a preposterous plan permeated my pate.

It was easy to rent a horse. It wasn't as easy to argue my brother in law into placing his pan on the pavement, and letting me ride the nag over his noggin. "Horses are so heavy!" he foolishly kept countering. "Besides, I have a cold sore." As he waddled away, I realized my plan was hopeless- until he stumbled over something in the street. Before he could pull his chin out of the asphalt, I had steered the rented mare over him, and her hind hoof scored a bull's eye on his bare bean.

The sound? It was far from CRANCH. The real thing turned out to be SLORNK. It was a sort of a slippery liquid sound. That was probably because my brother in law has oily skin and a thin skull. With the noxious noise fresh in mind, I streaked into my studio and feverishly lettered the word SLORNK boldly across the cartoon.


Weeks later the fan mail began pouring in. They all said the same thing. In fact, both of them were worded the same. The first one read "I want to congratulate you on that completely true to life cartoon you drew of the horse stepping on a man's head. The word SLORNK describing the sound was absolutely accurate. I know, because I am always getting my head stepped on by some careless nag." The second letter was the same as the first, except for the signature. I figured when I wrote them that there should be some difference. Otherwise the publisher might get wise when I showed them to him.

He was dumbfounded when he saw them. After recovering, he slapped me on my sunburn and rammed one of his dollar cigars into my mush. Unfortunately, he stuck the wrong end into my mouth. Besides, he was smoking it. "Two fan letters in eleven years" he murmured incredulously. "My boy, you have arrived! It's just like I predicted," my publisher beamed, "your horribly realistic sound words are paying off!"


I leaped on his desk. "Then I'm ripe for a raise?" I queried. peering so anxiously and closely into his red-rimmed readers that I could detect his wife's fingernail scratches on his contact lenses. Anticipation was causing me to quiver like a rat terrier with radio-active fleas on a cold day. The suspense was terrible. Finally he opened his trap. He was grinning. This was the day for which I had waited eleven long years. "It does not!" he roared, brushing me off his desk. "I was merely feeling pleased that at last you may be worth almost as much as I've been paying you!"

While I gathered my teeth up off the floor, he pointed at me demandingly. "If you want a raise, every one of your sound effect words will have to be absolutely authentic! In other words, don't draw a single sound word into your strips until you've actually staged the cartoon situation with real people and things!"


(Incidentally, you readers should stop worrying about my brother in law. Ever since the day the horse stepped on his head, he has had nothing but good luck. Why shouldn't he, what with a horseshoe embedded in the back of his bean? Furthermore, he's the only living person who can slide his head inside those record-in-the-slot phonographs without crushing his ears.)

My publisher pointed at me demandingly. "If you want a raise, every one of your sound effect words will have to be absolutely authentic! In other words, don't draw a single sound word into your strips until you've actually staged the cartoon situation with real people and things!"

As for my publisher's demands, they resulted in my running out of friends and relatives within a week. Neighbors complained about howls and screams emanating from the studio. People sued. The ASPCA hounded me. My wife and fourteen kids swore sudden allegiance to the Progressive party, then fled to Siberia.


Meanwhile, however, I managed to catalog hundreds of authentic sound words- enough to last me for a lifetime of cartooning, and enough I thought, to cover any and all comic situations, regardless of how terrible. I was so proud of my achievement that I showed the lengthy list to my publisher. Here are some of the more subtle sound words describing various clashings, crashings, slashings, bashings, hashings, mashings, etc. Read the situation, then voice the accompanying sound word to yourself, and note how vividly the picture then comes to your mind:

• Pinheaded person pullingg pate out of a pop bottle: FOINK!
  
• Glass eye falling into tomato soup: PLOOP!
  
• Glass eye falling into a pitcher of thick syrup: PLOFF!
  
• Man sitting on short tack: SQUINCH!
  
• Man sitting on long tack: SQUONCH!
  
• Uppers dropping in gob of putty: FLUP!

• Hungry cannibal filing eyetooth: FWATCH!
  
• Man with calloused feet crossing rough linoleum: SKIRP! SKIRP!
  
• Thumb gouging eye: SPOP!
  
• Hot lava speweing on WCTU convention: FOOSK!
  
• Hot lava spewing on Elks' convention: SSSCRISH!
  
• Person skidding on hot stove in bare feet: SCREESH!
  
• Beaver biting into wooden leg: CRASP!
  
• Car crashing into large vat of frogs' eggs: SKWORP!
  
• False teeth falling through skylight: TWUNK!
  
• Sock in the face with Sears Roebuck catalog: PWOSH!
  
• Sock in the face with Montgomery Ward catalog: PWASH!
  
• Octopus slapping a tentacle on bald bean: SPOOP!

• Man dragging toenails over No.2 grade sandpaper: SKARP!
  
• Man falling on face in a barrel of wet teabags: FROMP!
  
• Sock in the kisser with a wet codfish: SCHALAMPF!
  
• Person socking wet halibut with his kisser: SCHLOOF!
  
• Lowers falling into a bucket of cup grease: UNPH!
  
• Man with small head drowning in a glass of tomato juice: GOIK!
  
• Woodpecker hammering on human head: DUD-DUD-DUD-DUD-DUD!
  
• Cannon ball landing in mush of toothless man: FWOCK!
  
• Two bald men colliding headon: KROCK!
  
• Garter snapping on varicose vein: SCHWIPP!
  
• Single BB shot landing on a cow's udder: PWIP!
  
• Person pulling ponderous pate through a puny porthole: SPOOCH!
  
• Bear trap springing on human noggin: SPROCK!
  
• Rat trap springing on person's big toe: SPACK!
  
• Man falling into a garbage can full of spoiled caviar: CROFF!
  
• Surgeon tossing gallstones into empty garbage can: KRANG!
  
• Man with one hair getting a haircut: WHICK!
  
• Person being kicked in the neck: PFWUMPFPH!
  
• Person getting kicked in snappers: PWACK!
  
• Measle germ snapping at skin: SCHLOPP!

If you've been able to struggle through the foregoing list of cartoon words, perhaps now your acoustical sense has been sharpened to the extent that you can readily guess a situation just by reading a sound word. To test your ability, hee is a list of cartoon words denoting various noises. If you can guess the action by which even one of them is produced, then your extremely something or other.

SNIKK / SPIRP / FAMP / SWORP / SPITCH / KANK / IKK / SPRATCH / PWOT / YOTCH / KZEEP / KLISH / FEEMP / SHZWOP / KOPYP


Now check your definitions with the following list. Even if you missed defining all the words, it's no reflection on your intelligence. Fact is, the more you miss, the brighter you probably are. On the other hand, the more you can guess, the better comic strip cartoonist you can become- unless, unfortunately, you're already one.

• SNIKK: The sound made by an African pygmy idly snapping his fingernail against his skull
  
• SPIRP: Nose being caught in an orange juicer
  
• FAMP: Corpulent person falling on back in a vat of peanut butter
  
• SWORP: Meteor hitting obese dame on back of neck
  
• SPITCH: Man sticking his head inside huge dynamo in action
  
• KANK: Crazed horsefly crashing into dome of empty-headed man
  
• IKK: Person with protruding eyeballs falling face down

• SPRATCH: Court plaster being yanked off polose chest
  
• PWOT: Wet socks being tossed into the corner of the room
  
• YOTCH: Post office pen forming the letter O
  
• KZEEP: Man with rusty eyelid winking at gal
  
• KLISH: Man falling on chin on thin crusted beetle
  
• FEEMP: Mole (on chin) being hit with stray buckshot
  
• SHZWOP: Obese dame's girdle splitting out
  
• KOPYP: Skin pore snapping shut on contact with cold air

"Good work!" my publisher mumbled two days later, when he had finished reading the list. "Then I get the raise?" I gurgled hopefully. His brows knitted. (He was working on a pair of socks at the same time.) "Not until you complete that list by adding one more sound word! The word that's missing is the one that describes the sound of a railway train running over a cartoonist's conk!"

"That should be easy," I chirped. "I'll just-" Suddenly, the awful significance of his demand dawned on me. My publisher had conceived of this diabolical plan to prevent my getting a raise. But I would fool him.

A half hour later my noggin was resting uncomfortably on a railroad rail.


They told me later at the hospital that it wasn't too bad. Only 22 cars, plus the locomotive had been derailed. "The train crew wanted the day off anyway" my doctor said. "They will be up later to thank you." While he poured glue in the cracks in my conk, I struggled to recall the exact sound of the locomotive passing over my pate. I became frantic at the thought that it had eluded me. Then I remembered. How could I forget something that had been so forcefully crammed into my mind?

I raced out of the hospital and downtown to my publisher's office. When that man saw the Scotch tape on my skull, he blanched a little. "Did you find out what the sound of a train running over a cartoonist's head is?" he asked. "I did." I announced triumphantly. He leaned expectantly so far forward that his rear suspender buttons flew off, zipped out the window, and nailed a burglar who was ransacking a safe in an office across the street.


"What is the sound?" he asked shakily.
"It is GJDRKZLXCBWQ."
"GJDRKZLXCBWQ?" he queried doubtfully.
"No. It's GJDRKZLXCBWQ. The L is silent."


My publisher is not emotional. I have never known him to be moved to tears. But now his lips quivered violently. Or perhaps he was just trying to get something out of his teeth. "Now I have heard everything!" he blubbered.

"The raise." I reminded him. "How about it?" "The raise? Oh yes. To show my appreciation for collecting the most complete and authentic list of cartoonists' sound words, I'm going to double your salary!" Whereupon he reached into his wallet and tossed me twice as much as I had been getting previously per week.


Then I realized that my list of sound words wasn't quite complete until that moment. In all my life I had never heard that lush, lovely sound. It was a mild, whispery sound, barely audible.

Here it is: FMNW!

It was the sound made by my new doubled salary- two $1.00 bills brushing lightly together.


Thanks to Marc Schirmeister for sharing this with us.

For more examples of Basil Wolverton's genius, see Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper Also see... Virgil Partch's Wild, Wild Women Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Here We Go Again and Man The Beast, George Lichty's Grin and Bear It; Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics; and Milton Knight's Great Brown Pericord Motor.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Voice Acting: Mel Blanc on Advertising

Today, Jerry Beck posted the cover of this record over at Cartoon Brew, so it's a good time to rerun our MP3 of this great speech by Mel Blanc. Enjoy!

There's one aspect of animation that I haven't dealt with much yet- Voice Acting. My own research in this area is pretty limited. I hope sometime in the future, a specialist in this field will contribute their expertise to the Archive to curate this important aspect of cartoon filmmaking.

But that doesn't mean that we don't have any interesting material dealing with voice acting at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Eric Graf stopped by with a wonderful treasure the other day... An LP record pressed by the production company of legendary voice actor, Mel Blanc. It's a recording of a speech by Blanc at the 1966 Annual Awards Luncheon of the Station Representatives Association. Titled "Mel Blanc Takes A Humorous Look At Commercials: Past, Present and Future (Who The Hell Is Mel Blanc?)", this record is a hilarious glimpse at both the advertising industry and a little known aspect of the career of one of the most famous voice actors of all time.

Who The Hell Is Mel Blanc?
(Mel Blanc Associates/1966)
(AAC Audio File / 32kbps-44.1kHz / Mono / 25 minutes / 6.25 mb)

Thanks for bringing this by Eric!

If you enjoyed this article, you'll also want to check out our... Profile of Carlo Vinci, John K on Flintstones Animators, Bugs Bunny In Coronet Magazine, Ward Kimball In Escapade Magazine, UPA Done Right, The Pencil Test of Art Babbitt's Best Scene, A Drawing Lesson From Walter Lantz, and Remembering Berny Wolf

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Bugs Bunny in Coronet Magazine

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.



Archive supporter, Rich Borowy stopped by to digitize some classic Stan Freberg radio shows for the archive database yesterday. Under his arm was a box of old Coronet and Omnibook magazines. Rich said that he was given the box at a garage sale that was closing down. I've never looked at these particular magazines, but they have wonderful illustrations and features. Here are highlights from the December, 1945 issue. Check it out. There's a big surprise at the end. Thanks for bringing these in, Rich!

Each issue opens with an inspirational message and illustration. This one is by illustrator, Vera Bock. Many issues contain the work of Arthur Szyk, whose book The New Order we featured last year. I'll be doing a whole post of Szyk illustrations from Coronet soon.


Next up is a retelling of "The Night Before Christmas" by Golden Book illustrator, Sheilah Beckett. Will Finn recently posted about her book on Gilbert & Sullivan Operettas. These pages strongly resemble the back of Little Golden Books. Do you think Sheilah Beckett designed that?




Here's a feature on the artists who created the Famous Artists Course... Stevan Dohanos, along with his illustrator friends Albert Dorne, Ben Stahl, Hardie Gramatky, Fred Ludekens and Dean Cornwall donated their services to decorate casts in the Halloran Army Hospital in New York.



And here's a feature on exotic superstitions and religious beliefs by Stevan Dohanos...



Here's a real surprise- The autobiography of Bugs Bunny! "A Hare Grows In Manhattan"...









If you enjoyed this post, check out... Little Verses Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Baby's House, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Life Drawing: Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.


Willy Pogany was one of the most important book illustrators and designers of the first half of the 20th century. His Rime of the Ancient Mariner and books based on Wagnerian opera are masterpieces, to say nothing of his editions of Mother Goose, Alice in Wonderland and Faust. While other illustrators were confining themselves to an occasional tipped in plate buried among page after page of identical text blocks, Pogany broke the mold, designing elaborate pen and ink illustrations that surrounded the text, ornate capitals for the beginning of each page and calligraphy that turned the words into art. He is probably the artist most responsible for establishing what we think of as modern children's book illustration.


He was also an author and teacher, with three books covering drawing, oil painting and watercolor. Today, I am presenting a section from his book Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons titled...

FIGURE SKETCHING

One of the most fascinating subjects to draw is the human figure.

The fine proportions, beautiful modeling and delicate balance, and the infinite variations in movement and repose are such that there is no other living thing to compare with it.

Through countless ages artists of all races have drawn, painted and modeled the human form.


If you have never done any figure drawing, I would suggest that you start to draw the human figure in its simplest pose with little or no foreshortening. This is an upright standing position with arms close to the body and feet together.

Make up your mid before you begin, how large you want your drawing to be and mark on the paper the total length desired. Your drawing must be exactly the size that you have indicated on your paper.

Your next step is to draw a straight vertical line connecting the two marks. This will indicate the imaginary line of gravitation running from head to foot.

Now mark the center of the body by dividing the vertical line into two equal parts. Mark your proportions.

Draw in the oval of the head.


Measure the width of the shoulders compared to the length of the body. Draw in the shoulder line. Do the same with the hips.

To measure, use a pencil in your outstretched hand, first getting the width, then measuring vertically the number of times the width goes into the total length of the body. Now proceed to draw the masses of the chest, hips, legs, etc.


To check on your drawing, watch the shape of the background that surrounds the figure. See if these "left spaces" (or negative shapes) correspond with the outline of your drawing.

For instance, whatever the position of your subject, watch the shape and size of the space between the arms and the body; between the tilted head and the shoulder; between the two legs, etc, etc.

These will be your left spaces. Special attention to them will be of great help in making a correct drawing.















Drawing is a language, and it requires building a vocabulary to be eloquent. Students should carry a sketchbook with them wherever they go and draw everything they see- from people's heads in a late night coffee shop to fireplugs on the street. Everything you draw becomes part of your dictionary of imagery in the future.

Cartoons are about things that aren't real- pure imagination. But even here, it's important to have balance... A friend of mine, Louise Zingarelli once told me, "You can't draw crazy things until you can draw perfectly straight. Wonky perspective all over isn't weird or interesting- it's just ugly and dumb. You've got to have both, working right against wrong... just like working warms against cools in colors."

Willy Pogany was a children's book illustrator who specialized in fantasy subjects. At the end of the book, after the lessons, he presents a selection of his work sketches. Pogany was particularly eloquent, with a huge library of shapes and forms in his head. He also had an amazing sense of balance- making the fantastic seem real. This is truly great draftsmanship.

















This classic book is still in print. Pick up a copy at Amazon for your reference library.

For more art instruction posts, see The $100K Animation Drawing Course, Fundamentals of Composition Part One and Part Two, Chad's Design for Television, Willard Mullin on Animals, Incorporating Natural Forms- Haeckel's Artforms in Nature, and Originality vs Imitation: Chaplin's Shadow.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Theory: Propaganda

Today is the 70th anniversary of the beginning of WWII. So to mark the date, I am rerunning one of my favorite posts on propaganda posters from the first and second World Wars. I hope you take a moment to think about the sacrifices and strength of the "Great Generation". They're a good model for us in our own difficult times.

Back when I was in college, I was wandering through a junk shop and found a file folder that was stamped "Return To Louis Van Den Ecker, Technical Director". I peeked inside and found a pile of interesting clippings. It was a reference file dealing with propaganda posters from the First and Second World Wars. I bought the folder and brought it home and did some research on Louis Van Den Ecker. He turned out to have been an expert employed by the studios to insure that their depiction of particular times and places were accurate. He worked on the 1939 version of Hunchback of Notre Dame, Beau Geste, Adventures of Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo among many other films. I assembled his clippings into a logical order and mounted them into a scrapbook. Today, we scanned this book for the Archive.


The concept of propaganda is widely misunderstood. Many people automatically assume that it's a negative thing. But propaganda is just a tool that can be used for either good or bad. Propaganda involves bypassing the intellect and appealing directly to emotion to motivate a group of people to action. During the World Wars, time was of the essence and masses of people needed to work together for the common goal of defending the nation. It would have been too slow to talk each and every move out with the whole population, so governments used powerful imagery to bring everyone together in the war effort.


I'm not sure if it's just the bias of this particular collection, or if it was actually the case during WWI, but looking at these examples, one can see how inept the Germans were at using propaganda. The German posters in this collection seem to appeal to abstract concepts like national pride, flags and mythology; while the Allied propaganda goes straight for the heart with concepts like motherhood, security, and moral outrage. Look at the example above. The figure in the foreground represents the outrage of the nation at the sight of a sinking ocean liner and a sailor's hand rising from the surf begging for help. Even after nearly a century, the powerful imagery still makes its point.


Contrast that impact with the poster above... Abstract concepts are stacked up on top of each other... It's not a baby... it's a statue of a baby. And it isn't even a statue of a baby, it's a statue of a cherub. There is no eye contact, just empty eye sockets. The emotional impact of the bullet hole in the helmet is totally negated by its similarity to the baby's belly button! It's hard to imagine this image motivating anyone to give money to the cause.


Early examples, like the one above, were created by renowned artists, and the subjects required close inspection, reflection and thought to grasp.

As time went by, the images became more graphic and direct...



Sketches of children orphaned by the war were potent images...




National and religious symbols seem to be much less effective, even when they are more interesting from an artistic standpoint...





These last two are interesting because they show how the two sides saw themselves. The German soldier is idealized in a kitsch way, while the French soldier seems more real and down to earth...



Which side would you rather be on?

When the nations of the world entered into World War I, the methods and techniques of propaganda were naiive and innocent. But by the end of the First World War, the techniques of waging war in the hearts and minds of the public had entered the modern era. Propaganda had become much more sophisticated and powerful.






By WWII, leaders realized that battles could be fought and won on the homefront. Propaganda became an important part of motivating the population to work together toward the common goal of defeating the axis powers. Compare the WWI posters in this and the previous post to the examples from WWII presented here. Notice how the design and layout enhance the emotional impact of the concepts. Many of these posters still pack a wallop.









For more on this subject, see Alfred and Elizabeth Briant Lee's book The Fine Art of Propaganda: A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches 1938.

Now you may be asking yourself, what does propaganda have to do with animation? Well... Think for a moment about the definition of propaganda, "bypassing the intellect and motivating an audience through a direct appeal to emotion" and then think about this image from an animated film I'm sure you're familiar with...


Can you think of any other plot devices used in animated features that operate on this primitive level?

If you enjoyed this post, check out... Walt Disney Goes To War, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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History: Dispatch From Disney's

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the history of animation told through the careers of great animators.


Here's a fascinating pamphlet that was part of the Clair Weeks collection. Titled "Dispatch From Disney's", this 1943 publication was distributed to Disney employees who were serving in the war effort. The first section includes an introduction by Walt, an article on the power of animation to educate by Major Alexander P. de Seversky (author of Victory Through Air Power), a cartoon feature by Roy Williams, and newsy info on Disney artists T. Hee, Freddie Moore, Frank Thomas and Woolie Reitherman.


The last part contains an article from Oliver Wallace describing how he was inspired to write "Der Fuhrer's Face", some doodles by Roy Williams on life as an Air Raid Warden, a feature on the Disney Studio exercise coach Carl Johnson, news on the South American tour, and detailed information on the Disney wartime training films.







































Many thanks to the family of Clair Weeks for sharing this important material with us.

If you found this interesting, you'll want to check out our previous posts about material from the collection of Clair Weeks... The Building Of The Disney Studios, Clair Weeks Goodbye Book, the 1938 Disney Artists Tryout Book and Clair Week's Animal Studies. Also, see... Walt Disney Goes To War, John Canemaker on Bill Tytla and Musical Timing Rediscovered.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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History: Clair Weeks- Pioneer of Indian Animation

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the history of animation told through the careers of great animators.


Bambi II?
Today I am presenting an interesting bit of history from the collection of Disney animator, Clair Weeks along with an exciting update since we last featured this topic. Read on for details...

Weeks was born in India, the son of a Methodist missionary- a source of humor for his co-workers at Disney. (See caricature, right.) He spent 16 years at the Disney Studios, working on Snow White, Bambi and Peter Pan. In 1956, Weeks travelled to Bombay, India on the invitation of Information Films of India to set up and train the country's first animation studio as part of the American Technical Co-Operation Mission. What started as a one year project expanded into almost a decade of service abroad working for the US Agency for International Development. Weeks toured Southeast Asia and headed up a communitactions office in Katmandu, Nepal. He made films and audio-visual programs that aided in the social development and economic growth of third world countries.

I know very little about Weeks' work in India, but a scrapbook donated to the archive by his family provides some tantilizing clues. I contacted the chapter of ASIFA in India asking if they had any information on Weeks, and the Vice President of ASIFA-India, Prasad responded...

The studio Weeks helped to train some animators for was the Films Division of India (FDI). The stint of Clair's there apparently lasted for about 18 months, during which they made a film called The Banyan Deer. I spoke to Rammohan, who was one of the students in 1956, and is generally acknowledged as one of the father figures of Indian animation to get these details. Clair apparently also taught in the late sixties or early seventies at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. One of the students at that point, Nina Sabnani heads the Animation Department there now.

Since this article was last posted, ASIFA-Hollywood has transferred a rare 16mm film showing Weeks at work at FDI in India. It's fascinating to see behind the scenes in the earliest days of Indian animation.


Cartoon Division of FDI (FDI/1956)
(Quicktime 7 / 13.8 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Here are some scans from Weeks' Indian scrapbook. If anyone has any information on the film or the people in the photos, let me know in the comments below and I will add it to this post.

THE BANYAN DEER (1957) STORYBOARD






TREND MAGAZINE ARTICLE




PRODUCTION PHOTOS

19 April, 1958: Sitting: S.L. Badami (Deputy Chief Producer), Ezra Mir (Chief Producer), Clair Weeks (Key Animator Instructor), Dr. B.V. Keskar (Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting), D.L. Kothari (Controller of Administration). Standing behind: G.K. Maharesh (Production Manager), G.K. Gokhale (Animator), S.M. Junnarkar (Editor), G.H. Saraiya (in dark pants, Director)





19 April, 1958: D.L. Kothari, Clair Weeks, Dr. B.V. Keskar, Ezra Mir. Behind: H.R. Doraiswamy (Camera Assistant), S.S. Varma (Animation Cameraman)





Many thanks to the family of Clair Weeks for sharing this important material with us, and thanks to Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation for transferring the film footage.

If you found this interesting, you'll want to check out our previous posts about material from the collection of Clair Weeks... Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, The Building Of The Disney Studios, Clair Weeks Goodbye Book, the 1938 Disney Artists Tryout Book and Clair Week's Animal Studies. Also, see... Walt Disney Goes To War, John Canemaker on Bill Tytla and Musical Timing Rediscovered.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Comics: Kurtzman's Comic Books

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about comics.


Today, Kent Butterworth stopped by on his lunch break to watch Terry Bears cartoons featuring eye popping Jim Tyer animation. I realized that it's been a while since I posted any comic book scans from Kent's great collection of golden age funny animal comics. I'm righting that wrong right now with some great examples by Harvey Kurtzman. Enjoy! (Thanks Kent!)




















If you enjoyed this post, check out our first article on Kurtzman & Elder's Little Annie Fanny Part One and Part Two. Also see... Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4, Milt Stein's Supermouse (Coo Coo Comics No. 7) Dan Gordon's Superkatt, Jim Tyer's Comic Books, Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan and Boodi Rogers' Babe Comics.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

6.6.09
.

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Comics: George Lichty Grin And Bear It Orgy!

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.


Archive supporter Christopher Lopez saw our feature on George Lichty a month or two back and decided to donate a big stack of vintage Grin And Bear It dalies and Sunday pages. I grew up with George Lichty's cartoons in the funnies every day, and as a kid, I didn't give much thought to them. But seeing his work from a wide range of years is a revelation. At first glance, Lichty's drawings appear sloppy, with formulaic oafish characters with their jaws agape. But look closer... His compositional sense and skill at putting across a visual gag is remarkable. There's nothing sloppy about his use of perspective either. His lines seem to be alive!


Along with the batch of comics, Christopher included an article on Lichty from 1952. It mentions a feature in the Saturday Evening Post titled "Does Lichty Really Hate People" (does anyone out there have a copy of that article we could scan?) and offers some choice tidbits on Lichty's working habits and lifestyle...

He works best in a crowded, noisy newspaper office. His desk is heaped so high with old drawings, discarded captions, letters he has forgotten to mail, cigarette stubs and fan mail that ever fourth day the janitors are ordered to dig through the debris just to make sure that Lichty is still alive and breathing.

Lichty has a few happy passtimes... He likes to putter around the house. When in doubt he lays little brick walls that wind aimlessly around the Lichty garden. He also plays the bass drum, sometimes at home, but more often as a member of the Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band, a unique musical institution that he says is perpetuating a dying art form. He is not certain what the art form is, but anyway, he admits it is dying.

Now if that isn't a great description of the life of a cartoonist, I don't know what is!

Lichty was one of the comic page's longest working artists. His style changed little over the years. Compare the examples below from the late thirties to the Sunday pages from the 50s. Lichty's distinctive free flowing lines were a staple of the funnies for over half a century. He may have drawn slouches, but I think you'll agree, as an artist, he was no slouch himself!



Here (thanks to Joseph Campana) is the entry on Lichty from Martin Sheridan's Comics And Their Creators...





1939 DAILY STRIPS






1937 SUNDAY PAGES
















MID 1940s DAILY STRIPS











1950s SUNDAY PAGES











Thanks Christopher!

Check out the fascinating link between Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs and George Lichty in John K's All Kinds of Stuff.

If you enjoyed this post, see Virgil Partch's Here We Go Again, The Wild Wild Women and Man The Beast. Also see... Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper; Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics; and Milton Knight's Great Brown Pericord Motor.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

6.3.09
.

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History: Terrytoons Studio Tour 1939

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the history of animation told through the careers of great animators.


Carlo Vinci and Connie Rasinski


Bill Weiss, Paul Terry, unknown, Larry Silverman, Carlo Vinci


For more on the Terry Studios' production process, see our earlier post, How Animated Cartoons Are Made
Recently, the family of the legendary animator, Carlo Vinci lent us two 8mm films to transfer for the archive. I'll post about the other one soon, but today I have a special treat for you... a color film outlining the animation production process from Terrytoons in 1939!

Here are frame grabs of most of the people appearing in this short. If you can identify anyone, please let us know in the comments below.


Animator Carlo Vinci



Story Man Larry Silverman


Story Man Tommy Morrison


Music Director Phil Scheib and Director Connie Rasinski


Animator Jim Whipp and his assistant





Makin' Em Move (Terry/1939)
(Quicktime 7 / 30.7 megs)

Here is the cartoon we see the artists working on in this film...






Harvest Time (Terry/1940)
(Quicktime 7 / 13.8 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Many thanks to the Vinci family for sharing this with us! And thanks to Jerry Beck too for arranging the video transfer of this delicate original film.

For more information on Carlo Vinci, see our Carlo Vinci Cartoon Hall of Fame entry. Also see... Carlo Vinci Notes / Terrytoons Model Sheets and The Temperamental Lion / John K on Flintstones Animators / Nat Falk's How To Draw Animated Cartoons Part One: History Of Animation / Part Two: The Cartoon Studios / Nat Falk's How To Draw Animated Cartoons Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: How To Draw Animated Cartoons and Part Five: How To Animate

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

5.28.09
.

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Comics: Chic Young's Blondie

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.


Chic Young was one of the most successful newspaper cartoonists of his time. His first syndicated strip, Dumb Dora ran from 1924 to 1930. He retired the strip to create a "pretty girl" comic (ala Polly & her Pals) titled Blondie. It was an instant hit. Young penned Blondie until his death in 1973. The strip is still in print, under the byline of his son, Dean.


The other day, Archive supporter Joe Campana stopped by for a visit. He brought along a book for us to digitize... Comics And Their Creators was written by Martin Sheridan in 1942. It's a treasure trove of biographical information on great comic strip artists. Today, I am presenting the chapter on Chic Young, along with some rare original Sunday pages from the collection of Marc Crisafulli.

















Here are some of the very earliest Blondie Sunday pages...


July 19th, 1931


August 9th, 1931


August 16th, 1931


August 23rd, 1931


September 6th, 1931
Many thanks to Marc Crisafulli for sharing these rare original comics pages with us; and to Joe Campana of Animation Who And Where for lending us Comics And Their Creators.

For more info on Chic Young, see... Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part Two and People On Paper. Also see... Polly & Her Pals Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Also see... Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three and Part Four; and Rube Goldberg's Side Show.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Filmography: The Little King in On The Pan 1933

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


The early sound cartoons that came out of New York have an indescribable quality that is sorely missing from animation today. The best way I can describe it is "fun factor". New York cartoons are gritty, unpredictable and outrageous with jazzy music forming the foundation for the action. There are no pretentions to be anything other than seven minutes of cartoony joy. This cartoon is no exception...






On The Pan (Van Beuren/1933)
(Quicktime 7 / 15 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

This cartoon was given to the Archive by Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation. Steve has been collecting, restoring and releasing incredibly rare animation on DVD. The discs are packed with great cartoons you can't find anywhere else, and have supplemental material that you can easily spend hours browsing. I highly recommend them.

If you like this cartoon, see some of our previous postings... Fleischer's You're Driving Me Crazy 1931, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles and Mariutch; Jim Tyer Comic Books and Tyer's Barnyard Actor.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

5.20.09
.

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Illustration: Tenggren's D'Aulnoy and Good Dog Book

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.


Just in case you aren't convinced yet that Gustaf Tenggren is one of the most amazing children's book illustrators of all time, here are two more persuasive arguments. These two books were published in 1923 and 1924, a very busy period for Tenggren. He had recently relocated to New York City, and he illustrated no less than eight books in a very short period of time. Make sure to click through the links to our other Tenggren posts at the bottom of this article to see more of his beautiful work.













THE GOOD DOG BOOK






Lines and Colors posted a nice feature on Tenggren this week.

For more incredible illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, see Tenggren's Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan & Juanita, and Small Fry and the Winged Horse.

See also... Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

5.12.09
.

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Comics: Dudley Fisher's Right Around Home

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.


You might remember an earlier post I did on the "Bird's Eye View" comics from Boy's Life magazine by Harrison Cady. (If you haven't seen it, by all means, check it out!) Here is a similar format comic, courtesy of our friends at Digital Funnies... "Right Around Home".

Dudley Fisher was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1890. He studied to be an architect, but dropped out to take a job as a layout artist at the Columbus Dispatch. After returning from WWI, Fisher created a comic strip called "Jolly Jingles". Year after year, he cranked out rhyming verse until he couldn't stand it any more. In December of 1937 he decided to take a break from jingles and draw what Christmas on his grandmother's farm would be like (if he had a grandmother and she lived on a farm!) He drew it as one big full page panel and readers immediately took to it and clamored for more. King Features picked up the strip and titled it "Right Around Home". These great Sunday pages date from early in the run- 1939.












When asked by a young artist what sorts of pens and paper to use to draw cartoons, Fisher recommended not worrying about things like that, saying "I feel certain that Michaelangelo could have done a masterpiece on meat wrapping paper with a toothbrush and shoe polish. It's all got to come out of the artist- not the ink bottle."

These fabulous scans of original Sunday pages were provided to the Archive by Jonathan Barli of Digital Funnies. Jonathan is hard at work on an important project- documenting and restoring early cartoons and comics in digital form. He offers a wide variety of fascinating material for sale on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. Please take a moment to visit the Digital Funnies website, and let him know that the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive sent you.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

4.29.09
.

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Biography: Carlo Vinci Notes From Terry-Toons

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


Last Friday, archive assistant Amir Avni, John Kricfalusi and I took a trip out to visit Carlo Vinci's family at the home of his wife, Margaret. Mrs. Vinci graciously welcomed us into her home for a tour of her collection of artwork belonging to her late husband. Carlo's animation desk, which he designed and built himself, still stands in his office just as he left it, with caricatures by co-workers hanging above it on the wall. Every room in the house has beautiful artwork filling the space. It was an awe inspiring experience to get a chance to see it all.


John K, Steve Worth and Margaret Vinci
Carlo Vinci was a remarkable artist. He received classical art training at the National Academy of Design in 1930. He joined Paul Terry's Terry-Toons soon after, and worked there for twenty years. He came West to join Joe Barbera at MGM, and ended up as the lead animator at H-B for twenty more years. But as I learned at my visit, those great achievements were only a small part of his story. In addition to cartooning, Vinci was an all-around fine artist, adept at oil painting, watercolor, illustration, stained glass and sculpture... in a variety of styles, from classical to baroque to art deco... with a wide range of subjects- still lifes, portraiture, landscapes and religious subjects. It was a mind blowing experience to discover the depth of talent behind a cartoonist we thought we already knew.


Carlo Vinci's son, Paul and grandson, John
with John K in front of Vinci's self-portrait
After we had viewed all the amazing artwork, Mrs. Vinci invited us to enjoy some home made Italian desserts with her family. Excited by everything we had seen, we had plenty of questions about Carlo and his wonderful career as an artist. We asked if she had met him before he started working for Terry-Toons or after, and she replied, "He was working for Mr. Terry when I met him. When we were courting, he lived in the Bronx, and I lived in Brooklyn. It was a long trip across town to meet for our date every Wednesday evening. Carlo would send me a little note with a cartoon every day in the mail when we couldn't be together. I've saved them all these years, but I don't suppose you would be interested in seeing them..."

Naturally, we were! Her son, Paul Vinci helped her to retrieve the hundreds of letters from a closet- all on Terry animation paper in envelopes with the distinctive Terry-Toons logo. Dating from 1938 to 1939, these charming little notes had a personal message, along with brilliant drawings depicting Terry characters. Paul commented that he himself hadn't seen the letters since he was very small; and even then, his mother only shared one or two with him. They had been bundled away carefully for over fifty years. Mrs. Vinci has kindly allowed us to share these drawings with you...

















We will be presenting more material by the great Carlo Vinci in the coming weeks. All of us at ASIFA-Hollywood appreciate Mrs. Vinci's generosity. Paul and John Vinci will be printing out this post and sharing it with her, so you can thank her yourself in the comments below.

For more information on this great animator, see our Carlo Vinci Cartoon Hall of Fame entry. Also see... Terrytoons Model Sheets and The Temperamental Lion / John K on Flintstones Animators / Ruff And Reddy And Pinky The Pint-Sized Pachyderm / Alex Toth Model Sheets / Nat Falk's How To Draw Animated Cartoons Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: How To Draw Animated Cartoons and Part Five: How To Animate

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

4.8.09
.

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Parody: More Whack Comics

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about comics.


Today, we present more parodies from Whack comics... But first take a look at the picture above. It's an an early advertisement for the Joe Kubert School. 3D comics and movies were all the rage then. Television was beginning to cut into ticket sales at theaters, and producers were looking for a technical advantage over TV to give them an edge. But the fad quickly fizzled out. Movie audiences and comic book readers were more interested in the quality of the movies and comics than the number of dimensions. Today, DVDs and digital media downloading are cutting into the traditional media markets. Some producers are beating the drum for 3D again. Let's hope they realize soon that people are more interested in quality entertainment than formats.

The following story by Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer trumpets their publication of the world's first 3D comic book, Three Dimension Comics in 1953. Strangely enough, the comic this was published in, Whack wasn't in 3D!








PARODY

In my last post on Whack comics, I left something unsaid, hoping someone would pick up on it in the comments. J.J. Hunsecker was the one who finally mentioned it...

I find it kind of ironic that you're using Whack as an example of parody, since it can also be said to be a ripoff of MAD.

It's important to understand exactly where the line lies between exploiting an existing concept and plagiarism. Whack doesn't plagiarise Mad magazine... it simply uses the same basic format- a parody comic book. It doesn't ripoff Mad magazine any more than Roy Rogers ripped off Gene Autry or Star Wars ripped off Star Trek. They are simply working in the same genre.

MIGHTY MOOSE
Here's an amusing parody of Paul Terry's Mighty Mouse. The Super Rodent himself even makes an appearance! This is a "second generation parody". Mighty Mouse himself was a parody of Superman.








FLUSH JORDAN
Flash Gordon was also a comic inspired by the success of another similar comic. Alex Raymond created the strip to compete with Dick Calkins' science fiction comic, Buck Rogers. Here, Flash gets "Whacked"... and Bing Crosby is dragged into the mess too!







Thanks to the Estate of Milton Caniff for allowing us to digitize this.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Parody: Whack Comics Part One and Ripoff vs Inspiration: Chaplin's Shadow. Also see... Jim Tyer's Funny Animal Comics, Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper, Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4, and Boodie Rogers' Babe Comics Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

4.3.09

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Design: UPA Done Right

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.


John Kricfalusi's blog, "All Kinds Of Stuff" continues to be the most information packed and eye opening animation resource on the internet. If you haven't visited it lately, you'll want to check out the series of posts John has been writing on the impact of UPA on animation. I guarantee that you've never heard these sorts of opinions anywhere else, and once you digest the concepts, you'll never look at a UPA cartoon the same again.

Wally Walrus vs. UPA Part One
Wally vs. UPA 2: Stylized Cartoonists Take Their Skills For Granted
Wally vs. UPA 3: Walt Craves Respect
Wally vs. UPA Sidebar: Flat Stylized Cartoons I Like
Wally vs. UPA 4: When Milquetoasts Rebel
Wally vs. UPA 5: UPA Bred Worse Imitations
Sidebar: Spumco Stylized Cartoons: 1990


Here is just a sample of what John has to say...

If you don't know cartoon history and you just grew up watching Cartoon Network, you might think that this flat stuff is something new and "hip". It's not. It's much older than UPA, and the more graphic styles in cartoons before UPA didn't come with the wimpy trappings. Because of our association with UPA's beginnings, we assume that when we do something in a graphic style, we have to also carry over all the other attributes that came with UPA's particular cartoon vision- the blandness, the wimpy world view, the snootiness.

People usually don't analyze or break apart the elements that make up something they like. If we like it we assume that every ingredient in it is equally good. Then when we develop our own styles, we copy the bad with the good. That's what we need ANALYSIS for!

Like many artists, I have tons of influences. There are lots of things that inspire me. I try to figure out why they do and I break them down into their separate ingredients. I then decide which ingredients are the ones that are useful and discard the others that might have just come along with it, but don't actually add anything. There are good things about UPA and Disney- Tex Avery combined them and added his own world view to them and made cartoons more entertaining than either style.

John's comments cut like a sword through the "design for design's sake" school of animation. He cites Tex Avery as the one cartoon director who was able to incorporate modern design sensibilities, while still maintaining the entertainment value and humor of classic cartoons. He's dead right. This post reminded me of my favorite series of commercials... which were directed by Avery at Cascade studios and animated by Rod Scribner.


Not only is the character design modern in the "UPA style" but the movement has been stylized in a complementary manner. Why don't the current "Flat" cartoons move like this?!



KoolAid Spots (Cascade/ca.1960)
(Quicktime 7 / 6.8 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

UPDATE: I was browsing through Cartoon Modern today, and I found a post that Amid did last Summer that perfectly encapsulates my thoughts about the importance of animation even in stylized cartoons...

The Importance of "Animation" in Animaton Design

One of the hardest things to get across when discussing animation design is that it's not just about character designers, layout artists and background painters. The animator is a critical member of the design team....

The primary reason, in my opinion, that so much of today's stylized animation rings hollow is because nobody ever follows through on the animation. Regardless of whether a show is animated traditionally overseas or if it's done in Flash, most contemporary TV series creators think their job is done once they've created a pretty model sheet and slapped on a bit of color styling. These few stills illustrate however that model sheets are often the least important aspect of stylized animation-- what the animator does with those designs is what truly counts.

Exactly! Great animators like Bill Littlejohn, Rod Scribner and Grim Natwick moved these kinds of designs in unique and stylized ways.

This post is causing quite a ruckus over at Michael Sporn's blog. Check out Michael's post titled Aaargh. In particular, read the comments. Here's a real doozy...

Not everything has to look or move gorgeously to be good or artful. That's one of the dumbest, scariest suggestions I've heard anyone make in animation circles.

Yow! Do people really think lousy animation is artistic?!

Cartoon Brew has jumped into... The Great UPA Debate. Will Finn (check out his great new blog, small room) writes...

I see Steve Worth's point about Kool-Aid ads and such, where perfectly admirable work is overlooked because it wasn't in the service of "Art witha a capital A". Animators who want to evaluate work on a technique level should be able to appreciate that wherever they find it and not just where the intelligentsia have enshrined it with a golden frame.

If you found this article to be interesting, see also... Early 50s UPA Model Sheets, Herb Klynn The Shrimp, Grim Natwick's Post UPA Commercials, Alvin Show: The Whistler Storyboard and Jules Engel's Color Keys.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

4.2.09
.

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Caricature: The Genius of Miguel Covarrubias

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.


Miguel Covarrubias was one of the most famous artists of his day, but chances are you've never heard of him. Caricaturists know his work- Al Hirschfeld studied under Covarrubias and shared a studio with him in 1924. He spoke of Covarrubias' talent in the same breath as Daumier and Hogarth. Ethnologists and archaeologists know the name of Covarrubias as well. His analysis of pre-Columbian art and the culture of Bali led to books on the subject that have become classics. And his reputation as an anthropologist rivalled any of his peers in that field. Illustrator, caricaturist, anthropologist, author and educator... It's high time you knew about Covarrubias too!


At the age of nineteen, Miguel Covarrubias, already a renowned caricaturist in his home country of Mexico, emigrated to New York City. He was an instant sensation, and his illustrations began appearing in New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Fellow Mexican artist, Diego Rivera described his illustrations as "those caustic but implacably good-humored drawings which, fortunately for his personal safety, people have been misled into calling caricatures. In Covarrubias' art there is no vicious cruelty, it is all irony untainted with malice; a humor that is young and clean; a precise and well defined plasticity."

Most of the caricatures from Vanity Fair below depict unlikely pairs of public figures. Click on the links to the Wikipedia entries on these people and see why Covarrubias put them together.

MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS CARICATURES


Jim Londos & Herbert Hoover
(Vanity Fair, August 1932)


Senator Smith W. Brookhart & Marlene Dietrich
(Vanity Fair, September 1932)


Al Capone & Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes
(Vanity Fair, October 1932)


Clark Gable & Edward, Prince of Wales
(Vanity Fair, November 1932)


Ex-King Alfonso & James J. Walker
(Vanity Fair, December 1932)


Mrs. Ella Boole & Miss Texas Guinan
(Vanity Fair, January 1933)


Arthur Brisbane & The Sphinx
(Vanity Fair, May 1933)


Emily Post
(Vanity Fair, December 1933)


Admiral Richard E. Byrd
(Vanity Fair, December 1934)


Sally Rand & Martha Graham
(Vanity Fair, December 1934)


Dr. Samuel Johnson & Alexander Woolcott
(Vanity Fair, March 1935)


Auguste Piccard & William Beebe
(Vanity Fair, April 1935)
Covarrubias was much more than just an illustrator and caricaturist though. His books on Bali and Mexico revealed a careful analytical mind with an eye for detail. The following article from an arts magazine from 1948 encompasses the latter part of Covarrubias' career...

MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS OF MEXICO CITY
By Henry C. Pitz (January 1948)






Many thanks to the ever-faithful supporter of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, Kent Butterworth for sharing this wonderful material from his own collection with us.

If you enjoyed this post, check out... Colliers Magazine Illustrations From the Mid-1930s and the Mid-1940s and also... John Held Jr.'s Flappers, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Parody: Whack Comics No. 2

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about comics.


A week or two ago, I was taking part in a discussion on the Cold Hard Flash blog about ripping off other artists' work. One of the people discussing the subject brought up the concept of parody, but seemed to have no idea what actually constituted parody. The dictionary defines parody like this...

par-o-dy [par-uh-dee] noun, plural -dies, verb, -died, -dy-ing.
1. a humorous or satirical imitation of a serious piece of literature or writing: his hilarious parody of Hamlet's soliloquy.

Parody is self-evident. The Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart said, "I find it difficult to define obscenity, but I know it when I see it." Parody is like that too. But if you're going to be a cartoonist, you have to be able to do more than just recognize it... you need to be able to control it and utilize it as a tool. If you succeed, you can create something that does much more than just make fun of another work- it can illuminate an otherwise unthought-of truth, making your parody a creative work that stands on its own. If you fail, you risk plagiarism.

pla-gia-rism [pley-juh-riz-uhm, -jee-uh-riz-] -noun
1. the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.

As a cartoonist, you have to know how to use parody properly. Parody is not an excuse for plagiarism. It's important to add your own caricature and exaggeration to comment on the work you're parodying. And your exaggeration has to make a point. The easiest way to recognize how to do that is to study and analyze other parodies. Here is an example of a comic that parodies other comics... Whack! Today I am presenting two stories from this issue...

WEIRD CREEPY AWFUL SPOOKY GHASTLY COMICS
This story is a parody of the EC Comics horror line, which included Tales From The Crypt, Vault Of Horror and The Haunt Of Fear. If you aren't familiar with these comics, you should check out the reprints produced by Russ Cochran.








STEVE CREVICE
This parody of Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon was created by cartoonist, William Overgard. Overgard was a friend of Caniff's. Once, when Caniff was hospitalized, Overgard ghosted a whole week of Steve Canyon dalies so Caniff had time to recouperate. This particular copy of Whack belonged to Caniff. It was lent to us by his estate to digitize.







Let me know in the comments below if you would like to see more from Whack comics.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Ripoff vs Inspiration: Chaplin's Shadow and Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon Dalies. Also see... Jim Tyer's Funny Animal Comics, Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper, Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4, and Boodie Rogers' Babe Comics Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.27.09
.

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Pinups: Early Interlandi Playboy Cartoons

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.


The internet never ceases to amaze me... I was working on this post, featuring early examples of Playboy cartoons by Phil Interlandi, when I took a break to check my email... A message had just come in from Interlandi's daughter Carla, filled with great info for our Cartoon Hall of Fame entry. I'm going to let her tell you about her father...

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHIL INTERLANDI
By Carla Interlandi Armstrong
Phil Interlandi was a veteran freelance magazine cartoonist whose work appeared in national magazines ranging from Look to Better Homes & Gardens but most notably in Playboy, where he was a mainstay for decades. A longtime resident of Laguna Beach, CA, Interlandi sold his first cartoon to Playboy in 1955. "He had an acerbic wit." said Michelle Urry, Playboy's cartoon editor. "He just ran roughshod over all the sacred cows. He didn't care about the taboos."



The Chicago-born son of Sicilian immigrants, Interlandi showed artistic ability at an early age, as did his identical twin, Frank, who later became a syndicated political cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times. During World War II, Interlandi joined the Army at 17. He drew cartoons for The Yank, the Army newspaper, and was later a prisoner of war in Germany, a subject he didn't like to talk about according to his daughter, Liza Stewart.


After the war, Interlandi and his twin brother studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Interlandi worked a number of years in advertising before becoming a full-time freelance magazine cartoonist. A year after he moved to Laguna Beach in 1952, his twin followed. The inseparable brothers were part of Laguna's colorful cadre of cartoonists that grew to include Ed Nofziger, John Dempsey, Don Tobin, Roger Armstrong, Dick Shaw, Virgil Partch and Dick Oldden.



Following Phil Interlandi's lead, the cartoonists began a midday ritual of taking a break from their drawing boards and meeting in the bar at the White House restaurant on Coast Highway. "That was the first bar I walked into in Laguna," Interlandi explained in 1982, "and it became a habit."



Interlandi illustrated a number of books, including Art Linkletter's Kids Say the Darndest Things, and I Wish I'd Said That, in addition to Dick Van Dyke's Faith, Hope and Hilarity: The Child's Eye View of Religion and Ed McMahon's The Barside Companion.



He was really just a marvelous artist," said New Yorker cartoonist Sam Gross, who had known Interlandi for 30 years. "He also really knew how to draw good looking girls and yet make the cartoon funny."



Phil Interlandi passed away in 2002 at the age of 78.



Thanks to Carla Interlandi Armstrong for the insights about her father's life and career.

For more Playboy cartoons, see these posts... Erich Sokol, Jack Cole And Other Great 50s Playboy Cartoonists, Eldon Dedini Part One and Part Two (video interview!), Kurtzman & Elder's Little Annie Fanny, Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi.

If you're a fan of Playboy artists like Cole, Dedini, Wilson and Sokol, you will want to get this great collection of cartoons, Playboy: 50 Years- The Cartoons. Check it out!

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.26.09
.

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Theory: Chaplin's Shadow

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.


The Legendary Charlie Chaplin
Recently, controversy has erupted in the blogosphere over artists who directly copy other artists' work (See the articles on Cartoonist Todd Goldman, Family Guy and Jerry Mouse and The Great Ripping Friends Rip-Off.) The issue of exactly where the dividing line lies between "homage" and "ripoff" is open for debate among fans, but today I want to speak to the artists out there... and in particular, aspiring animators. For you, this subject is more than just idle chatter.

Every day, an artist makes thousands of decisions. These decisions affect not just the piece he is working on at the time, but his entire creative output. It's important to understand why you're making the decisions you make, and to strive to work your problems out for yourself; not just apply someone else's decisions as a substitute for your own. Truly great artists refuse to even copy themselves... Take Terry-Toons animator Jim Tyer for instance. He never approached the same situation with the same animation twice in his entire career.

There are consequences to the decisions we make as artists. Sometimes in the heat of creativity, right and wrong can become blurred by practicality and commercial demands. It's up to you to balance those competing pressures, but as the old saying goes, "Virtue is its own reward."

It's hard to not react with bias to current examples of imitation, but time can lend clarity. I'm going to tell you about two performers who were popular nearly a century ago. One of them you know. The other you don't. The reason for that is in the decisions those two artists made. -Stephen Worth


Edgar Kennedy and Charlie Chaplin
CHAPLIN'S SHADOW
In 1916, Charlie Chaplin signed a contract with Mutual to produce 12 comedy shorts over a year and half's time. He was paid the unheard of amount of $670,000 for the shorts, and was given unprecidented creative freedom. We now know that the end result of this deal was a package of slapstick shorts that represent the most influential comedy films in the entire history of cinema. But back in 1916, it was just a LOT of money being paid to a relatively untested artist.

Here is an anthology that pulled together articles from Judge magazine during this seminal period in movie history...


In the pages of this anthology is this article on Chaplin's deal with Mutual. Although the form of the prose is quite different from what we read today in entertainment magazines and blogs, the apologies for appealing to the unrefined masses, complaints about big budgets, and stories about movie-star ego trips are the same sorts of sniping we read in reviews today. What this writer didn't know was that Chaplin was on the cusp of breaking through as the single most important filmmaker of his time.


Now that the stage is set, I want to introduce you to "The Shadow"...

Billy Ritchie worked alongside Chaplin on the English Music Hall stage, performing as the drunk in the classic sketch, "Mumming Birds", just as Chaplin did in his vaudeville days. Chaplin's biographer, David Robinson described this sketch like this...

The setting for "Mumming Birds" represents the stage of a small music hall, with two boxes at either side. The sketch opens with fortissimo music as a girl shows an elderly gentleman and his nephew- an objectionable boy, armed with peashooter, tin trumpet, and picnic hamper- into the lower O.P. box.

The Inebriated Swell is settled into the prompt side box, and instantly embarks upon some business of a very Chaplinesque character. He peels the glove from his right hand, tips the waiting attendant, and then, forgetting that he has already removed his glove, absently attempts to peel it off again. He tries to light his cigar from the electric light beside the box. The boy holds out a match for him, and in gracefully inclining to reach it, the Swell falls out of the box.

The show within the show consisted of a series of abysmal acts... The acts changed over the years, but some remained invariable: a ballad singer, a male voice quartet, and the Saucy Soubrette, delighting the Swell with her rendering of "You Naughty, Naughty Man!"

The finale was always "Marconi Ali, the Terrible Turk- the Greatest Wrestler Ever to Appear Before the British Public". The Terrible Turk was a poor, puny little man weighed down by an enormous mustache, who would leap so voraciously upon a bun thrown at him by the Boy that the Stage Manager had to cry out, "Back, Ali! Back!" The Turk's offer to fight any challenger for a purse of £100 provided the excuse for a general scrimmage to climax the act.

Ritchie came from the same basic background as Chaplin, so when Chaplin began to rise to fame, he was a natural choice to put out film comedy shorts to compete. Henry Lehrman, who was previously a director at Mack Sennett, hired Ritchie to star in a series under his "Lehrman Knock-Outs" banner. The comparisons with Chaplin were inevitable. Ritchie used the same costume that Chaplin wore in "Mumming Birds"... the bowler hat, bamboo cane and tattered suit that became famous as the Little Tramp costume.

Here is an interview with Ritchie made around 1916...



The author of this article makes it clear that Ritchie's career has one foot planted in his own shoes, and the other in Chaplin's. But it didn't last... When Chaplin's Mutual Shorts were released, they were a sensation. They blew Ritchie out of the water. Lehrman was forced to change distributors to Universal in 1917, and the quality of the films took a nose dive. Two years later, Ritchie was attacked on the set by an ostrich, and never recovered. He died from the injuries he sustained in 1921, leaving his wife without financial support.


Chaplin imitator, Billy West
Billy Ritchie wasn't the only Chaplin imitator... Billy West and Charles Amador also traded on the image of the Little Tramp; and a cartoon series produced by Gaumont in Europe exploited the character as well. Chaplin sued to protect his creation, but ultimately his own success and brilliant creativity plowed his imitators under better than any legal writ.

Ironically, Chaplin never sued his old comrade, Billy Ritchie. And after Ritchie's death, he took pity on his widow and gave her a job as his costumer. She prepared the Little Tramp costume for Chaplin's performances, just as she had for her late husband.

The history of film is full of stories like this. Here are Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo...


...remember them? No? Well, that's because they didn't last either. Petrillo was quoted as saying, "I hold the record for being the world's youngest has-been."

In time, surface similarities like the hat and cane cease to matter. Audiences didn't love Chaplin for his costume. It was the spark of genius in the creator that made the Little Tramp immortal. You can't steal genius. You may gain a short term benefit from ripping off another artist to further your own career, but you'll pay for it in the end.


The moral of this cautionary tale is to be true to yourself. The business has no shame. The audience won't sue you for ripping off someone else's idea. You need to develop a conscience for yourself. No one is going to do it for you. You owe it to your muse.

Here's an interesting post on a similar subject at John K's blog.

If you found this article interesting, see... The Application Of Inspiration / How To Properly Use Reference / Incorporating Natural Forms / (Visual) Literacy / Why Do We Need An Animation Archive?

If you want an incredible insight into the mind of a brilliant filmmaker, you will want to get the DVD of Unknown Chaplin. Using never before seen outtakes, these three programs reconstruct Chaplin's creative process from the ground up. This is one of the greatest documentaries ever made. Check it out!

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.24.09
.

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History: The Building Of The Disney Studio

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the history of animation told through the careers of great animators.


Among the collection of Clair Weeks was a publication from 1939 dealing with the construction of Disney's studio in Burbank. It's a fascinating look at the way the Disney operation was structured at the peak of its success. The end of the article is taken up with a detailed description of the production process at Disney. (Note: There's an error in the order of the steps in the section on story- the script was transcribed from the storyboard, not the other way around. And they discuss voice recording out of sequence as well.)






Now that you've read the article, click on these images to see Hans Perk's AFilm LA for more info on the Burbank lot...


Aerial view of Burbank before Disney's studio is built.


Aerial view of the Disney studio.


Helen Jordan's photos of the studio under construction.


The newly completed animation building in 1939.
If you found this interesting, you'll want to check out our previous posts about material from the collection of Clair Weeks... Clair Weeks Goodbye Book, the 1938 Disney Artists Tryout Book and Clair Week's Animal Studies. Also, see... Walt Disney Goes To War, John Canemaker on Bill Tytla and Musical Timing Rediscovered.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.19.09
.

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Illustration: 30s Colliers Illustrations

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.


Yesterday, we had a wonderful surprise. Archive supporter Kent Butterworth stopped by lugging eight huge bound volumes under his arm. They were library copies of Colliers magazine from the late 1940s and early 1950s. He donated them to our library so folks who stop by can browse the amazing illustrations and cartoons. Thanks, Kent!

Here are a few images from the June 5th, 1948 issue... Check out the amazing illustrations for mundane products like outboard motors and golf balls! Magazines today can't compare.











Here's a batch of advertisements from the mid-1930s Colliers magazines loaned to us for digitization by archive supporter Mike Fontinelli. I don't know about you, but after looking over these great magazines, I have the urge to go out and buy a 1936 Terraplane!















If you enjoyed this post, check out... John Held Jr.'s Flappers, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.14.09
.

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Comics: People On Paper (MGM/1945)

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.

ASIFA-Hollywood Board Member, Bill Turner was watching TCM the other night when he spotted a program that he knew would be great for the Archive...


This is a 1945 MGM short subject that shows the top newspaper cartoonists of the day at work in their studios and homes. Bill instantly recognized several cartoonists that we've featured here on this blog in the past few weeks. (Click on the picture to see our article.)


Milton Caniff
(Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon)


Hal Foster
(Prince Valiant)


Chic Young
(Blondie)


Al Capp
(Li'l Abner)
But that's not all... The film also includes footage of Bud Fischer (Mutt & Jeff), Frank King (Gasoline Alley), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), Dick Calkins (Flash Gordon), and Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie). There's even a little bit of animation of Li'l Abner at the end! Check it out...


"Passing Parade: People On Paper" (MGM/1945)
(Quicktime 7 / 24 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Thanks to Bill Turner for taping this for us!

For more on newspaper cartoonists, see... Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips, Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists and Part Four: Editorial Cartoons and Comic Books

Also see... Cliff Sterrett's Polly & Her Pals Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Also see... Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; and Rube Goldberg's Side Show.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.13.09
.

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Illustration: Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courtin

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about 50s children's book illustrators.


Archive supporter, Kent Butterworth dropped by with a wonderful children's book by the great illustrator Feodor Rojankovsky. Titled, Frog Went A-Courtin', this book won the Caldicot Prize in 1955 for Best Children's Picture Book of the year.

Rojankovsky was born in Russia in 1891, and served in the Russian army in the first World War. He spent some time in France, then emigrated to the United States when war broke out again in 1940. He was a prolific illustrator, creating over 100 picture books for Western Publishing's Golden Books line and for other publishers as well. When asked how be began his interest in art, he replied...

Two great events determined the course of my childhood. l was taken to the zoo and saw the most marvelous creatures on earth: bears, tigers, monkeys and reindeer, and, while my admiration was running high, l was given a set of color crayons. Naturally, I began immediately to depict the animals which captured my imagination. Also when my eider brothers, who were in schools in the capital, came home for vacation, I tried to copy their drawings and to imitate their paintings.

Later when l went to school in Reval Tallinn, an ancient town on the shores of the Baltic sea, my love for art was enhanced and strengthened by a passion for nature. Tallinn was surrounded by forest. The sea presented wonderful opportunities for excursions and study of sea life. But there were also steamers, sailboats, flags, and all the excitement of a port. This was no less exciting than playing Red Indians or reading James Fenimore Cooper, the beloved author of all Russian children before, during, and after the Revolution.

SELECTED ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
FROG WENT A-COURTIN'
Make sure to click on these to see them large. Rojankovsky was a master of texture, and the smaller size images don't show that as well.















If you found this to be useful, see also... Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

If you like this book, you're in luck... it's still in print. You can find it at Amazon.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Education: A Drawing Lesson From Walter Lantz

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.


Walter Lantz was one of animation's pioneers. His career in animation went all the way back to 1917, when he was an assistant working at the Hearst cartoon studio under the supervision of Gregory LaCava. He became a director for Bray, creating the Dinky Doodle series, where he appeared in live action alongside the animated title character.

He moved to Hollywood in 1927 and worked for a time as a gag man for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach. A friendship with Universal studio chief, Carl Laemmle led to Lantz heading up his own studio at Universal. For the nearly half a century, Lantz produced great cartoons starring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Andy Panda, Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy. He won ASIFA-Hollywood's highest honor, the Winsor McCay Award in 1973.

Archive supporter, Rich Borowy has been hard at work digitizing vintage television tapes from his personal collection for the Archive Database. Here is an example of the treasures he is contributing. This is an episode of the prime-time Woody Woodpecker Show from 1964. In this episode, Walter Lantz gives the kids in the audience a basic drawing lesson by showing a few of his staff artists at work. Included in this clip are Paul J. Smith and one of the few female animators from the golden age of animation, LaVerne Harding.




The best part about this program is that it includes the original commercials... and they are all animated! There are Kellogg's spots by Lantz's own studio starring Woody, as well as examples from Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward.





Click on the link below to see a clip from this great TV program. Many thanks to Rich Borowy for sharing this with us!


Woody Woodpecker Show (Lantz/1964)
(Quicktime 7 / 13.8 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

If you are interested in vintage drawing lessons, don't miss Nat Falk's "How To Make Animated Cartoons" Part One: History of Animation, Part Two: The Cartoon Studios, Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: Drawing For Animation and Part Five: How To Animate.

For more drawing lessons, see The $100,000 Cartoon Drawing Course, Bill Nolan's Cartooning Self Taught and Willard Mullin On How To Draw Animals.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.11.09
.

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Pinups: Jack Cole And More Great 50s Playboy Cartoonists

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.


Today, we continue our series of posts on the great cartoonists who worked for Playboy magazine over the years. Today, we feature artists from the late 1950s. Starting with...

JACK COLE
More than any other artist who worked at Playboy, Jack Cole was most responsible for establishing the tone and style of the single panel full page cartoons that appeared in its pages His watercolor technique was loose and free, but the overall impression was brilliantly planned out and remarkably expressive.

Born in 1914 in New Castle Pennsylvania, Cole was a self-taught artist. At age 17, he bicycled across the country to Los Angeles and sold the story of his odyssey, along with his own illustrations, to Boy's Life. After graduating from High School, he moved to New York and took up work in the comic book business. He moved up through the ranks at Harry A. Chesler, Centaur Publications and Lev Gleeson on a variety of crime and action comics. In 1940, he assisted WIll Eisner on The Spirit, ghosting the strip when Eisner was drafted during the War. He is best known though, as the creator of the Marvel superhero, Plastic Man.

In 1954, Cole began selling one panel "girlie" cartoons to various magazines, and his work caught the attention of the editors of the fledgling publication, Playboy. For the next few years, Cole's cartoons appeared in every issue, until his untimely suicide in 1958. Here are a few of Cole's beautiful watercolors from the late 1950s...







JACK DAVIS
When you think of Jack Davis, you probably think of his work with Harvey Kurtzman at Mad magazine, his covers for TV Guide, his advertising work and movie posters, and perhaps the Little Annie Fanny comics he painted for Kurtzman at Playboy. But you don't normally think of him as a one-panel cartoonist. Here's a rare example...



CHARLES W. MILLER
I don't have any info on Charles W. Miller. His tighter style is closer to the illustrators who worked for Colliers in the late 1940s than it is the washy, stylized work of Dedini, Sokol or Cole. But he was obviously a very accomplished artist- check out the sophisticated lighting in the second example for proof of that. If you know details of his biography, please post to the comments below.




AL STINE
Al Stine is still living, painting and teaching in South Carolina. In fact, he recently started doing editorial cartoons for the Anderson South Carolina Independent Mail. His masterful transparent watercolor technique really sets him apart. If you enjoy his work, drop him an email through his website- AlStine.com. It would be nice if someone out there would interview him and collect the info for our Biopedia Page.



Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see more about the great cartoonists of Playboy.

For more Playboy cartoons, see these posts... Eldon Dedini Part One and Part Two (video interview!), Erich Sokol, Kurtzman & Elder's Little Annie Fanny, Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi.

If you're a fan of Playboy artists like Cole, Dedini, Wilson and Sokol, you will want to get this great collection of cartoons, Playboy: 50 Years- The Cartoons. Check it out!

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.5.09
.

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Illustration: Lawson Wood- The Monkey Painter

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books and magazines.


Lawson Wood is one of the most unusual artists of the golden age of magazine illustration, largely because of the subject he chose to illustrate- monkeys... well, to be scientifically accurate, most of them are apes, but to a cartoonist, a monkey is a monkey.

Wood was born in London in 1878 to a family already well outfitted with artists. He developed his skills swiftly, and by age 18 he was a published illustrator. By the early years of the 20th century, he was established as an artist adept at both "straight" subjects and humorous fantasy. His images of cave men and dinosaurs were particularly popular in England, but the paintings that brought him fame in America were his monkeys...


This album was brought to us to digitize by archive supporter, Mike Fontanelli, and it gives you a good idea of how much Wood got out of his silly subject matter. Wood's Gran'pop Monkey and friends graced the cover of many issues of Colliers, and there was even talk of adapting the characters to star in a series of animated cartoons. Ub Iwerks was slated to produce the series, but the outbreak of war and the closing of Iwerks' studio nipped the idea in the bud. However, Wood understood the value of merchandising early on; he even headed up his own toy manufacturing firm, and he died a very wealthy man in 1957.

Some people can't get past the "kitsch factor" of Wood's illustrations. But even those who hate his work have to grudgingly admit that he had wonderful painting technique. Love him or hate him, here is Lawson Wood...












Mike Fontanelli recently brought by a big stack of vintage Colliers magazines with Wood covers for us to scan as well. Check these babies out!








The other day, I was surfing blogs and I came across a post that popped my eyes on Will Finn's blog, Small Room. It featured scans of a fabulous Wartime era calendar by Wood from Will's collection. I dropped him a note and he generously brought it by for us to scan for the Archive. Here are a few samples...






There are more images from this great calendar in Will's article on Lawson Wood. If you haven't bookmarked Will's page yet, you should. Where else are you going to find inspiration and insight like the stuff on Will Finn's Small Room?

For more info, see Bud Plant's terrific Lawson Wood Bio. Many thanks to Will Finn and Mike Fontanelli for their generous support of the Archive project.

If you found this post useful, see our posts on... 1940s Colliers Illustration and Colliers From The 30s.

Also see... The Genius Of Miguel Covarrubias, Wartime Propaganda Posters Part One and Part Two, Will Finn's Letter From Ward Kimball, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll / Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick / Arthur Szyk's The New Order / Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.3.09
.

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Comics: Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon Dalies

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about comics.


Today, we have an exciting post for you... original artwork by Milton Caniff for the Steve Canyon newspaper strip.


Archive supporter, John Ellis is working with the family of Milton Caniff on a DVD release of the live action Steve Canyon television series, which debuted in September of 1958 on NBC. In searching through the family's collection of memorabilia, John stumbled across a batch of original inks of daily and Sunday pages that the family didn't realize that they had. The estate of Milton Caniff has generously allowed the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive to digitize the material for inclusion in our cartoon database.


John Ellis has been doing considerable research into Caniff and Steve Canyon. I asked him to write a few words about Caniff...

Milton Caniff has been referred to as "The Rembrandt of the Comic Strip", and oft by himself as "an Armchair Marco Polo", but in fact this whirlwind of a comic strip innovator and writer was essentially a sincerely nice man who loved to draw. Yes this gentleman born in Hillsboro Ohio in 1907 created and drew Terry and The Pirates from 1934 to 1946, which absolutely set the standard for the adventure comic strip. True, he raised the bar with Steve Canyon, which unlike Terry, he owned lock stock and barrel from the first daily strip in January 1947 through to June 1988, the final installment published shortly after his death. Absolutely he worked rain or shine, seven days/strips a week for 54 years, even from his hospital bed, the deadlines never ended.

Milton Caniff in his studio ca. 1947
(click for a larger view)

But beyond the art and dedication, what is true is that I've never heard an unkind word in his regard. His nephew Harry Guyton can't even remember Milton ever losing his temper. My friend David Haft, who produced the NBC Steve Canyon primetime TV series in 1958, made a comment as we watched Milton on a vintage filmclip promoting the series recently. He said "Lovely, lovely man". Happy 100th birthday Milton.

John Ellis
Hollywood, 2007

This is the first of several posts featuring the Caniff Collection. Make sure to click on the images to see high resolution versions. Caniff's amazing adventure strip from the late 40s has never looked better!
















If you enjoyed this post, see... Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One- Meet The Men Behind the Comics and Part Two- Studying Comic Strips, Dan Gordon's Superkatt, Rube Goldberg's Side Show and Alex Toth Model Sheets

STEVE CANYON TV SHOW

For info on the Steve Canyon TV show DVD, see... www.stevecanyondvd.blogspot.com

STEVE CANYON AT AMAZON

Fantagraphics has a great book on Caniff's career, and Checker has released year by year reprints of the classic Steve Canyon strip. Caniff was a master storyteller, and the first few years of Steve Canyon are examples of his genius at the height of its powers. Click on the pictures for more info.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

"Steve Canyon" is a Registered Trademark of the Milton Caniff Estate.
© 2007 Milton Caniff Estate. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

2.24.09
.

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Story: The Greatest Cartoon Writer Of All Time

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.



The other day, a discussion on cartoon writing erupted in response to recent posts on the subject in John Kricfalusi's blog. One of John's main points is that the golden age cartoons that we all regard as the greatest cartoons ever created were written by cartoonists as storyboards, not written in words as scripts. In support of his argument, he presented video clips of Walt Disney and Walter Lantz discussing the qualifications of the people who wrote their cartoons. (See also, Page 5 of the 1938 Disney Training Manual).

The scriptwriters dismissed John K's points as old fashioned and irrelevant to the current scene, while expressing respect of a general sort for the classic cartoons of the past. They claimed that it was just a matter of John's personal tastes, not a reflection on the effectiveness of the process itself. They never seemed to address the fact that prior to 1960 stories for cartoons weren't created and developed with words in script form- they were drawn. In listening to these arguments by current cartoon scriptwriters, I began to wonder how much they really knew about the process used to make the classic cartoons they expressed respect for. I posed a simple question...

Who was your favorite golden age cartoon writer?

It's a fair question- one that I've heard animators discuss and argue about on many occasions. Surely current cartoon writers would have golden age writer heros, just like animators study golden age animators like Milt Kahl or Grim Natwick...


Disney story man, Joe Rinaldi
But none of the scriptwriters participating in the discussion could name a single golden age cartoon writer. The only names they could mention were other current scriptwriters, or novelists, journalists and live action screenwriters who worked in totally different media. They had no idea who pioneered their profession and the process these people used to create cartoons for nearly half a century. To be fair, this sort of ignorance of the history of our craft isn't just limited to writers. I've heard the same sort of admissions of ignorance from producers and directors, as well as artists and animators.

Here is an example of a story by my favorite golden age story man... Warren Foster.

Warren Foster is responsible for writing many of the greatest cartoons ever made... He started as a gag man on Fleischer's Popeye series in New York, and moved West in 1938 to join Bob Clampett at Warner Bros. He wrote a string of classic cartoons... "Coal Black And De Sebben Dwarfs", "Birdy And The Beast", "Falling Hare", "Baby Bottleneck", "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", and perhaps Bugs Bunny's most shaded performance, "Tortoise Wins By A Hare".

After Clampett's departure from the studio, he wrote for McKimson ("Gorilla My Dreams", "Easter Yeggs", "The Foghorn Legorn") and Freleng ("Ballot Box Bunny", "Bugs And Thugs", "Birds Anonymous"). Freleng said that Foster was the best story man he ever worked with. In the TV era, Foster wrote episodes of Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, The Jetsons and The Flintstones.

Here is a storyboard by Foster from his days at Hanna-Barbera. This is a model of clarity and simplicity, designed to meet the stringent economics imposed on TV animation at the time. This is a board from the pilot episode of The Yogi Bear Show.

















WHAT ABOUT ADVENTURE SHOWS
AND COMIC STRIPS?

In his article, "Detour Guide For An Armchair Marco Polo", master comic strip storyteller, Milton Caniff writes...

There has been a tendency recently for artists to automatically assume they cannot write their own stories because they see so many double by-lines. I contend that any man who can invent pictures can invent situations and dialogue. In fact, it should be easier for the artist to pilot his own action because he is not likely to write himself into one of those undrawable dilemmas in manuscripts about which illustrators have complained for years. --Milton Caniff

Sound familiar?

I'm working on a series of illustrated articles on how cartoons were written in the "golden age". For the first four installments, see...

WRITING CARTOONS

Part One- The Gag Session
Part Two- A Continuity Emerges
Part Three- Structure
Part Four: The Rough Board

If you found this post to be interesting, see also... Ren & Stimpy: Big House Blues Part One, Part Two and Part Three / The Alvin Show: The Whistler Storyboard / Chad's Design For Television / Ren & Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention Part One and Part Two / Charlie McElmurry's Year Of The Tiger Storyboard.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

2.23.08
.

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Pinups: Eldon Dedini's Satyrs and Nymphs

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.


You can't beat Christmas in the country.
A while back, we posted a group of Playboy cartoons by Eldon Dedini. Today, we present more of this artist's amazing work, along with a video interview of Dedini in his studio discussing how he got his start.

Eldon Dedini is best known for his magazine cartoons from Esquire and Playboy. But early in his career, he was an editorial cartoonist for local newspapers, and a story man for Walt Disney.

Archive supporter, Ken Kearney lives close to the Monterey area, where Dedini lived and worked for many years. In 2005, he produced an interview video, which he generously donated to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive for our biographical database. Here is a clip from Ken's video where Dedini tells how he got started as a cartoonist and his experiences as a story man with Disney on Fun & Fancy Free and Donald Duck cartoons like Dumbell of the Yukon.



Eldon Dedini Interview (Ken Kearney/2005)
(Quicktime 7 / 14.2 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

DEDINI IN PLAYBOY
Here is a feature on Dedini's famous "Satyr & Nymph" comics from Playboy, followed by some higher resolution images of individual cartoons...







We forgot the picnic basket!


I'd like you to meet my father,
but I don't dare. You know how
even old satyrs are!


It's not that I didn't believe in Santa Claus-
It's just that you've shattered my image
somehow...
For more info on the great cartoonists who worked for Playboy in the 1960s, see these posts... Eldon Dedini Part One, Erich Sokol, Kurtzman & Elder's Little Annie Fanny, Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi.

If you're a fan of Dedini, you will want to get Fantagraphic's great book, An Orgy Of Eldon Dedini. It comes with a DVD documentary called "Dedini: A Life In Cartoons" Check it out!

I'm not sure if Ken is offering these for sale, but if you would like to inquire about ordering a DVD of Ken Kearney's Dedini interview, email, kenkearneystudios@hotmail.com.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

2.10.09
.

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Comics: Walt Kelly's Pogo

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about comics.


Today is the Annie Awards. One of the most important contributors to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive project, Mike Fontanelli will be honored tonight for his immense help with documenting the lives and careers of great artists like Al Capp, Willard Mullin and Walt Kelly. I figured today would be a good day to rerun one of Mike's great articles...

FONTANELLI ON KELLY
One of the great heavy-hitters in the entire history of cartooning, Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. was born in Philadelphia on August 25, 1913, although his family relocated to Bridgeport, Connecticut during his second year.

Migrating to California to work on Donald Duck cartoons at Walt Disney Studios in 1935, he stayed until the strike in 1941, long enough to animate on Snow White, Fantasia, Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon. As good as Kelly's animation was, (had he stayed on, we'd all doubtless be reading about Disney's TEN "Old Men") his greatest achievements still lay ahead.

After leaving Disney, Kelly worked for Dell Comics. Here is a story he did for a 1946 Raggedy Ann & Andy comic book (the cover is from a 1948 issue)...








During his stints at Dell and the New York Star, Kelly introduced his most memorable creation to the world- in the unassuming form of a philosophical, swamp-dwelling possum named Pogo. The true heir of Herriman's Krazy Kat and Uncle Remus, Pogo was an American comic strip masterpiece. A flawless blend of slapstick, parody, allegory, political commentary, intellectual whimsy, social satire and Irish poetry- Pogo can be read on several levels at once, and it set a new standard of excellence in newspaper humor strips that has never been equaled.

Kelly has been compared to everyone from James Joyce to Lewis Carroll to T.S. Sullivant. He was named "Cartoonist of the Year" in 1952, and was elected president of the National Cartoonists Society two years later. He was the first strip cartoonist to be invited to contribute originals to the Library of Congress, and published some three dozen books during his lifetime- classics, all.


It's impossible for Gen X-ers weaned on modern tripe like Dilbert and Drabble to imagine the incredible graphic brilliance within the panels of Pogo. I remember literally getting lost in a Kelly Sunday page as a child, staring at the inspirational artwork for hours on end.

More than any other influence, I owe my choice of profession to the master, Walt Kelly. Here's some cool stuff from my collection. Enjoy!

Mike Fontanelli
Los Angeles, 2007

MIKE'S ORIGINAL KELLY SUNDAY PAGES
Make sure you click on these... They're amazing!






Take a moment to visit the official Pogo homepage.

ARCHIVAL POGO
Thanks, Mike for allowing us to digitize your original Pogo Sunday pages. For those of you out there who still don't understand how our archive works, what you see here on this blog is just a small representation of what our archive contains. For instance, we scanned Mike's Pogo inks at 1200 dots per inch- much larger than you see here on the blog. Each one of the Sunday pages comes out at a filesize of 1.7 gigs. For a sample of how detailed our scans are, click on the image below and compare it to the last panel of the last Sunday page...


You can see the grain in the paper! We scan every image in our collection at this resolution.

If you enjoyed this post, see also... The Father of Cartooning: T. S. Sullivant, Cliff Sterrett's Polly & Her Pals, , Harrison Cady's Birds Eye Views, Rube Goldberg's Side Show, and Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

1.30.08
.

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Tangent: Live The Fabulous Lifestyle Of A Hollywood Cartoonist

John Kricfalusi posted a blistering post this morning about popular culture and the upside down meaning of the words "liberal" and "conservative" today. If you haven't read it yet, check it out. Here is my own take on a similar theme...

LIVE THE FABULOUS LIFESTYLE OF A HOLLYWOOD CARTOONIST

The other day, a student at Woodbury volunteered to help build out our database. His name is Jo-Jo. He told me how much this blog, along with Eddie Fitzgerald's and John K's, has opened his eyes to how great cartoons were in the 30s, 40s and 50s. He had a sketchbook full of Preston Blair drawings and enthusiasm for Fleischer, MGM and Warner Bros cartoons. So I asked him what kinds of music he listens to...

"David Bowie mostly."

My jaw hit the floor. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I gave Jo-Jo the best tip he'll ever get...

Cartoons aren't the only things that were better back in the first half of the 20th century.

Mike Fontanelli stopped by later and pointed out that somebody should write a book titled "The Golden Age of Everything". Sure, there are things today that are incredibly great... computers, the internet, iPods, frost-free refrigerators, etc... but music, dance, illustration, writing, movies and cartoons were all better back then. Cartoonists should be aware of this, and they should absorb all of the greatness of the past. It will make them better cartoonists.

Today, I'm going to talk about music...


I know that someone out there is going to post a comment saying that there's still great music being made, it just isn't mainstream. I'm fully aware of the fact that there are talented musicians working today. But in the 30s through the 50s, incredible talent was a given. Performers, from the top of the heap to the bottom- from most popular to least- were all capable of making you do a double take and say "wow!".

When I ask kids what kinds of music they listen to, I usually get the response, "All kinds." But "all kinds" usually turns out to mean a million shades of the same color... current rock music. There are so many names today for the same kind of music. For the life of me, I can't tell the difference between rave, techno and electronica. In the past, there really were a million kinds of music... pop vocals, hot jazz, country western, big band swing, folk, rhythm & blues, bluegrass, mambo, dixieland, rock n' roll, sweet orchestral, be bop...

I could talk for hours about this subject, but the best proof is seeing what I'm talking about...

JAZZ
Lucky Millinder & Sister Rosetta Tharpe
"Four Or Five Times" (Soundie/1941)
(Quicktime 7 / 5.5 megs)

COUNTRY MUSIC
Larry Collins & Joe Maphis
"Under The Double Eagle" (Tex Ritter's Ranch Party/1959)
(Quicktime 7 / 5 megs)

THE BLUES
Leadbelly
"Gray Goose" "Pick A Bale Of Cotton"(1950s)
(Quicktime 7 / 10 megs)

POPULAR MUSIC
Les Paul & Mary Ford
"The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise" "Amuka Riki" (Grand Old Opry/1959)
(Quicktime 7 / 12 megs)

If you are a student planning to be a professional cartoonist, listen to music that relates to your work- read books that inspire cartoony ideas- watch movies to learn cinematic techniques that can be applied to cartooning- LIVE THE FABULOUS LIFESTYLE OF A FAMOUS HOLLYWOOD CARTOONIST!

By the way... Jo-Jo is a big Fats Waller fan now!

Let me know in the comments if you'd like more posts about other tangential subjects related to cartoons.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

1.27.09
.

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Illustration: N. C. Wyeth's Legends of Charlemagne

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books.


Today, we digitized a beautiful first edition of Bulfinch's "Legends of Charlemagne" illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. No illustrator of the golden age had a wider influence on the world of art than Wyeth. His son, Andrew Wyeth became a reknowned fine artist, and many of his other children and grandchildren became artists and musicians as well.

Wyeth studied under illustrator Howard Pyle, and quickly made a name for himself. His first published art was a cover for the Saturday Evening Post, a plum job right off the bat. In his early days, he was known as a Western artist. He travelled West to soak up the landscape. The trip resulted in a portfolio of images of Indians that vividly capture the light and spirit of the Old West.

Wyeth is best known for his book illustrations though. In 1911, he painted 16 color plates for Scribner's edition of Stevenson's "Treasure Island". It remains the classic version of the book. Wyeth was incredibly prolific over the next decade or so, "Treasure Island" was followed by "Kidnapped", "The Black Arrow", "The Boy's King Arthur" and many more. The book we are presenting today was published in 1924 by David McKay. It displays Wyeth at the top of his form. Even the endpapers are beautiful!












If you enjoyed this post, see... Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights, Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll, Edmund Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook

I'll be back with more great stuff later this week.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

1.23.09
.

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Character Design: Alex Toth Model Sheets

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.



Alex Toth passed away last year at the age of 77. Along with Will Eisner and Jack Kirby, Toth is considered one of the giants of adventure comics. Today's post is just the first of several on this important artist. Toth began his career at age 15, creating illustrations for Heroic magazine. He graduated from the High School of Industrial Arts in 1947, and soon was working at DC Comics on The Flash, Green Lantern and The Atom. He left DC in 1952 and was drafted into the Army in 1954.

After his stint in the service, he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked for Dell on the highly regarded Zorro comics. In 1964, he joined Hanna-Barbera as a designer and storyboard artist on Space Angel, Jonny Quest, Herculoids and Super Friends. His designs for these shows are masterful and imaginative.

The pity is that the actual animation on these shows isn't even close to being in the same league. Realistic designs like these are very difficult to animate, and require a draftsman of Toth's calibre to be able to pull off convincingly. But the late 60s was the wrong time for such a challenge. Hanna Barbera was in a mad race with Filmation to see who could put out the cheapest factory-made programming on the tightest schedule. Toth's imagination and skill were left behind in the dust. Instead of respecting what could have been, Toth's designs are now taken completely out of context and subjected to ridicule in current TV programs.

Archive supporter, Kent Butterworth brought us a few original Toth drawings to digitize, and I've supplemented them with some xeroxes belonging to the family of Carlo Vinci.

















If you found this post to be interesting, see also... Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning, Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights, Lotte Reineger's Prince Achmed Part One and Part Two and The Wan Brothers.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

1.22.09
.

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Biography: The Father of Cartooning- T. S. Sullivant

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 4 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great biographies of important artists.



T. S. Sullivant is one of the most important cartoonists in the history of the medium. He pioneered many of the elements of anthropomorphism that we now take for granted. The general public may not be familiar with his name, but animators sure appreciate his work. (See Eddie Fitzgerald's first article on Sullivant and his second.) The influence of Sullivant's animals (along with the work of Heinrich Kley...) can be seen in many of the Disney features.

Sullivant was born in 1854, and didn't begin cartooning professionally until the age of 32. His cartoons appeared in Life and Puck during the 1890s, and in Judge around the turn of the century. William Randolph Hearst signed him to an exclusive contract in 1904, and his mastheads populated by cartoony animals appeared on the top of the Hearst comics pages until 1907. Sullivant returned to Life magazine in 1911, and remained there until his death in 1926.

Sullivant's pen and ink style doesn't really suit itself for reproduction on a computer screen, but I have made large versions available of all of these images. Just click on the picture to see it larger.


















For more on pioneering cartoonists, see... Cliff Sterrett's Polly & her Pals Part One and Part Two; Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; Harrison Cady's Birds' Eye Views and Rube Goldberg's Side Show

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

1.21.09
.

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Animation Art: MGM Animation Drawings

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.



Today, we digitized a collection of animation drawings from MGM. Can anyone out there name all the cartoons represented here? Post your guesses to the comments below. Have fun!


















If you found this post to be interesting, see also... Cartoons: Tail of Two Bulldogs

For more sketches to study, see... Reluctant Dragon and Pinocchio Model Sheets, Two Disney Concept Artists, Mice & Duck Models and More Disney Model Sheets.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

1.20.09
.

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Instruction: Clair Weeks Animal Studies 1940

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.


Today, I'm proud to present more amazing treasures from the Clair Weeks collection. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Weeks was born the son of a missionary in India. At DIsney, he was often teased about his resemblence to a village parson or pilgrim. (See caricature to the right.)

Around 1940, Disney Studios was at its peak. Several animated feature films were in production at once, and the staff numbered at an all time high. Disney instituted a comprehensive training program for the artists at his studio, which included life drawing, animal studies and action analysis classes under the direction of Don Graham. Today, we scanned animal drawings by Clair Weeks from these classes.


Archive supporter, Mike Fontanelli was in last night when I was scanning these beautiful sketches, and he expressed his admiration for Weeks' skill. It's difficult to draw animals and capture any kind of natural pose because they are always moving. Weeks not only exhibited mastery of construction and posing, but also the ability to embed the spark of life that makes a drawing come alive. His technique allowed for both analytically realistic depiction and cartoony stylized caricature.

Aspiring cartoonists and animators should look over these drawings carefully and make a trip to the zoo to study the animals themselves the way the artists did at Disney in 1940.
















If you found this interesting, you'll want to check out our previous posts about material from the collection of Clair Weeks... Clair Weeks Goodbye Book and the 1938 Disney Artists Tryout Book. Also, see... Willard Mullen on Animals.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

1.14.08
.

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Pinups: John Held Jr.

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.

Today, Archive volunteer, Gary Francis brought in a couple of Playboys from the late 60s to add to our collection of digitized images by Sokol, Dedini, Interlandi, Sneyd and Vargas. We will be posting more by these great artists soon, but I particularly wanted to bring this great feature on John Held Jr. to your attention.

John Held Jr was born in 1889, and by the age of 16 was an accomplished sports cartoonist for the Salt Lake City Tribune. He served in the military during WWI, and soon after his return he gained fame for his work as an illustrator for Life, Judge and College Humor. His style and subject matter defined the "Jazz Age" of the 1920s. His cartoons depicting sexy flappers and their raccoon coated beaus living the life of flaming youth were all the rage. In later years, he worked in woodcuts and illustrated scenes from the "Gay Nineties"

Here is a feature on Held from the January 1966 issue of Playboy magazine...









I just added the last page of this article, which includes some great biographical info on Held. (A nice Virgil Partch comic too!) If you would like to see more of Held's work, visit Shane Glines' excellent site... CartonRetro.com.

If you find this posting to be useful, you should also see our postings on George Petty's Ridgid Tools Calendars, Erich Sokol, Eldon Dedini, Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

12.22.08
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Illustration: EInar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books.


A few weeks ago, we featured the work of John Bauer from the Swedish Christmas annual, Bland Tomtar Och Troll. After Bauer's premature death in a shipwreck, Gustaf Tenggren took over the series. A few years later, Tenggren relocated to America and the job was passed on to Einar Norelius.

I first heard of Norelius on P-E Fronning's blog, Martin Klasch. After seeing the beautiful illustrations from Jim, Jock and Jumbo that Fronning posted to his Flickr page, I went searching for books Norelius had illustrated. I found a batch of various vintages of Bland Tomtar Och Troll with an online bookseller in Sweden and had them shipped to me sight unseen. I wasn't disappointed...

1929














1934















1944/49











Wouldn't some of these designs work great as stop motion puppets? If you have any information on Einar Norelius, please let us know about it in the comments below.

See also... John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll (1917), Gustaf Tenggren's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, and Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

12.17.08
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Illustration: Disney Christmas Cards

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about 50s children's book illustrators.

Not a creature was stirring... except Mickey Mouse!

The weather is turning snappy, and the holiday cards are beginning to arrive at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, so the Christmas holiday must be close on the horizon. It's time again to share this batch of wonderful Christmas cards from the Disney studio collected by Disney animator, Claire Weeks from 1938 through the mid-1950s. The designs on these cards are so much fun, it makes you wish the films themselves looked this cartoony.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our friends at Anime Weekend Atlanta. They sent us a generous Christmas gift that will go a long way to purchasing the collection of St Nicholas Magazines I told you about last week. I hope those of you out there who have benefitted from the work we are doing at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive will remember us with a gift of support this Christmas. I'd also like to the family of Clair Weeks for sharing these great cards with us. See the bottom of this post for links to more treasures from the Weeks collection.

1938








1948




1949





1950





1951





1952





1953





1954





1955





1956




For more treasures from the collection of Clair Weeks, see... History: Clair Weeks' Goodbye Book and History: 1938 Disney Artists' Tryout Book

See you at the Annies!
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

12.15.08
.

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History: Disney's Artist Tryout Book

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the history of animation told through the careers of great animators.


Today, we scanned another fascinating document from the collection of Clair Weeks. This is the "Disney Studios Artist's Tryout Book" from 1938. It provides a valuable overview of the production process and description of the various job categories. You will definitely want to print this out and study it carefully.

Here are some quotes from this booklet that you might find interesting...

STORY MEN must be able to draw. The stories are not written but are visualized in sketch form.

The value of an animator is dependent upon his ability to dramatize and caricature life, and to time and stage his characters' actions in an unusual and interesting way. An animator must be a showman- he must know how to entertain an audience, to present a gag, to picture dramatically an ordinary incident. Above all, he must be a sure and skillful draftsman.

THE DIRECTOR must have complete knowledge of every phase of animation, have executive ability and outstanding dramatic talent. He must be familiar with practically all of the Arts... To date, all directors have arisen from the ranks of the Studio, sometimes through story work, but more often through animation. Because of the complexity of animation it seems that this will continue to be the case.

All inking and painting of celluloids, and all tracing done in the Studio is perfomed exclusively by a large staff of girls known as Inkers and Painters... This is the only department in the Disney Studio open to women artists.

The original brochure was in very poor condition, with tears and waterstains throughout. I'm sure that this was carried around in Weeks' back pocket for quite a while. But Photoshop can work miracles, so these scans ended up looking better than the original.

In case you haven't noticed, the Archive has become "an embarassment of riches". We are doing very important work here. I hope you will support our project any way you can.


















If you found this useful, you'll also want to check out... Walt Disney Goes To War, John Canemaker on Bill Tytla and Musical Timing Rediscovered.

Jerry Beck posted a related booklet at Cartoon Brew... Titled "The Ropes At Disney", it outlines the rules and regulations governing the employees of the studio and the organizational hierarchy of the various departments.



If you haven't seen it yet, make a point of checking it out.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

12.11.08
.

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Comics: Dan Gordon's SuperKatt

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.

The other day, John K posted an article in his blog about Dan Gordon. He described Gordon as a "pure cartoonist" whose characters seem really alive and motivated from within.

Gordon was an animator, story man and director on the Superman and Popeye series at Fleischer in the early 1940s. After the war, he dropped out of animation and made a living as a comic book artist, working on titles like Giggle Comics. He returned to animation in the late 1950s as a storyboard artist at Hanna Barbera, (Gordon boarded the pilot episode of The Flintstones) and on Clampett's Beany & Cecil series.

Here is an example of Gordon's work featuring Superkatt. These scans were donated to the Archive by our good friend Kent Butterworth. Thanks Kent!










For more on Dan Gordon, see Sherm Cohen's great features at Cartoon Snap.

If you enjoyed this comic, see also... Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4, Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper, and Boody Rogers' Babe Comics Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

12.10.08
.

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Comics: Milton Knight's A. Conan Doyle

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.

Today, we had a visit from the talented cartoonist, Milton Knight. He brought along the original boards from one of his stories for Graphic Classics series.

Milton is an amazing artist... His work is informed by a diverse variety of influences, from Japanese art to Terrytoons. His compositions and line reflect a distillation of the New York cartooning style, while still remaining uniquely his own. I can't think of a single living cartoonist whose work in any way resembles Milton's. He's truly one of a kind.

Milton kindly agreed to let us post this entire story adapted from a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...

THE GREAT BROWN-PERICORD MOTOR

















If you enjoyed this story, you can find the Graphic Classics Anthologies at Amazon. Also, make it a point to visit Milton's Website.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Biography: Clair Weeks' Goodbye Book 1952

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 4 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great biographies of important artists.


Today, we had a visit from the family of Clair Weeks. They brought along several portfolios full of beautiful drawings, mostly from Bambi. Over the next few weeks, they will be allowing the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive to digitize the material for inclusion in our database. They also promise to write a Biopedia Page for Weeks. Here is the "Readers' Digest version" of Weeks' career...

A missionary's son, Clair Weeks was born in 1912 in India. He lived there until the early 1930s, when he relocated to America. In 1936, he joined the staff of the Walt Disney Studio and set to work as an assistant on Snow White. He went on to assist Marc Davis on Bambi, CInderella and Peter Pan, taking a brief break from animation to serve in the military during WW2.

In the early 50s, Weeks left the studio travel the world. He eventually settled in Bombay, India, where he headed up a government owned studio that produced animated shorts. Weeks' impact on Indian animation was immense. The people he trained were the pioneers who established the Indian animation industry.


The treasure I'm presenting today dates to August of 1952... It's the scrapbook given to Weeks upon his departure from Disney. I won't spoil the fun by telling you what's in it. Click on the images and prepare to be amazed! (Thanks to Hans Perk for the identifications!)



Members of the "9 Old Men": Marc Davis (Weeks was his assistant), Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, Milt Kahl, Eric Larson / Assistant Animators: Bob McCrea, Clarke Mallery, Iwao Takamoto, Julius Svendsen, Bill Eigle (?)


Ben Sharpsteen (Director) / Hazel George (Studio Nurse) / Hal Adelquist (Asst. Director) / Oliver Wallace (Music) / Koneta Roxby (Library) / Bob Gibeaut (Cutting) / Jo Sears (Ink & Paint / Production)


Layout Artists: Lance Nolley, Al Zinnen, Don Griffith, Ken Anderson, Ken O'Connor, Mike Holoboff, MacLaren Stewart, Basil Davidovich, Tom Codrick, Charles Philippi / Background Artists: Jimi Trout, Hugh Hennesy, Ray Huffine, Art Riley, Dick Anthony, Ralph Hulett, Al Dempster, Claude Coats, Art Landy / Art Directors: Thor Putnam, John Hench / Directors: Jack Kinney, Charles "Nick" Nichols, Gerry Geronimi, Wilfred "Jaxon" Jackson / Asst Directors: Bee Selck, Lou Debney, Toby Tobelman (?) / Directors' Secretary: Marie Dasnoit / The Man: Walt Disney / Tom Jekel (?)


Animators: Bob Youngquist, Jack Campbell, Les Clark (9 Old Men), Hugh Fraser, John Lounsbery (9 Old Men), Harry Holt, Art Stevens, George Nicholas / Asst Animators: Walt Stanchfield, Lou Appet, Bob Ogle, Dale Barnhart


Don DaGradi (Art Director)



Animators / Assistants: Dick Lucas / Al Wilson / Jim Steele / Eric Cleworth / Ambrozy Paliwoda / Jerry Hathcock / Charlie "Chuck" Downs / Bob Carlson / Woolie Reitherman (9 Old Men) / Ed Soloman / Wathel Rogers


Bonar Dyer (Personnel) / Mary Flanigan (Notary) / Bunny Venable (Production or Legal)



Mostly Effects Animators: Retta Davidson, Dwight Carlisle, Joe Nunez, Sandy Strother, Dan MacManus, Al Severns, George Rowley, Marion Mahnken, Jack "Buck" Buckley, Frank Onaitis, Ed Parks, Jane Fowler


Ed Aardal (Animator) / Harvey Orr (Print Shop) / Johnny Bond (Head of Clean Up)




Ken Peterson (Animator / Prod. Mgr. / Scheduling) / Andy Engman (Effects Animator / Prod. Mgr.) / Esther "Esta" Haight (Front Office File Room / Western Union) / Anne Meyer (Production?)


Thanks to the family of Clair Weeks for sharing this with us!

If you enjoyed this post, you'll also want to check out... Art Babbitt's Best Scene / Canemaker on Tytla Part One and Part Two and Carlo Vinci, Pioneer Animator

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.26.08
.

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Illustration: Uncle Remus Stories 1949

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about 50s children's book illustrators.


On Saturday archive volunteer, Eric Graf brought by another treasure for us to digitize... a 1949 edition of the Disney Giant Golden Book, "Uncle Remus Stories". It features a spectacular cover by Mary Blair and many beautiful interior illustrations by Al Dempster and Bill Justice.

This book is interesting, not just for its relationship to the rarely seen Disney film, Song of the South, but for the material that doesn't appear in the film. Along with the familiar stories about the Tar Baby and Brer Rabbit's Laffin' Place, the book illustrates a dozen other stories like "De Great Rabbit Terrapin Race", "Brer Fox and de Stolen Goobers" and "Why de Cricket Fambly Lives in Chimbleys".
































If you found this to be useful, see also... Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One , Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.24.08
.

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Illustration: Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights 1909

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books.


Yesterday, I posted on Lotte Reiniger's Prince Achmed, and I thought it might be interesting to see a different approach to the same subject... this time by illustrator Maxfield Parrish.

Parrish was one of the most successful artists of the golden age of illustration. It is said that during the depression, there were more Maxfield Parrish prints hanging on the walls of American homes than there were American homes!

The book I'm featuring today was done early in Parrish's career, but it contains all of the aspects of his style that would make him famous... the electric blues set off of bright sunset oranges, the dramatic lighting effects, the amazingly lifelike natural shapes and patterns contrasted with large flat areas of color, and the total control of the mechanical aspects of offset printing... if you look carefully at the foliage in the image with the urns on either side, you can see that the painting was pasted up from several pieces. Bud Plant's website has an interesting article on how Parrish used the four color process. Check it out.











I'll be posting soon on another of the great American illustrators, N. C. Wyeth.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Edmund Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.21.08
.

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Filmography: Reiniger's Prince Achmed, The First Animated Feature

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


If you ask the average person what the first feature-length animated film was, just about everyone will answer Walt Disney's "Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs". But Disney's film wasn't the first animated feature by a longshot. Arguably, that honor belongs to Lotte Reiniger's "Adventures of Prince Achmed".


In 1923, Reiniger and her husband and business partner, Carl Koch began work on an ambitious project... a feature length silhouette puppet film based on "The One Thousand and One Nights". She worked with animator Bertold Bartosch and background artist Walter Ruttman for three years on the film. The paper cutouts were jointed using wires and delicately arranged on top of a lightbox, where it was photographed frame by frame. Reiniger continued to animate her distinctive silhouette films up into the mid-1970s. She passed away in 1981.


Archive volunteer, Eric Graf was perusing a local library book sale when he spotted an amazing find... a portfolio of prints from Reiniger's landmark film. Published in Berlin in the year the film was released (1926), this group of images shows just how beautiful Reiniger's work was... and how unique. Eric picked up the book for the archive and brought it by today. Thanks, Eric!

Our reader, Michael generously translated the synopsis for us...


Once upon a time there was a wizard who could control all the powers and elements of the world. One day, he made a mighty flying steed out of pure will and thought. Then he took it to the caliph's palace and asked him to let him marry his daughter in exchange for the horse. The girl refused (she thought he was ugly), so the plan was dismissed, but her brother, Achmed, got angry and insulted the wizard. So the latter set up a trap for him: He offered him to have a ride on the horse to see how fast and strong it was. But as soon as he was in the saddle, the horse flew up into the sky and far away. Achmed managed at last to make it land on an island. There he found many beautiful women asking him to be their lover, but he denied as he wanted to find their queen, who - as he had heard - was a woman of exceptional beauty.


Achmed flew over the island on the magic horse and saw a lake shimmering in the night. While he was waiting there, a bird with beautiful feathers landed nearby and changed shape before his eyes: It transformed into Paribanu, the queen of the island, and she wanted to bathe there; around her were many gentle women. Achmed asked her to stay with him, but she was frightened and tried to flee; he, however, held on to her feathers and followed her through the thicket like the hunter follows the deer. He asked her to flee no longer and sat her onto the horse with him. Then they flew over numberless countries, until at last they found a lonely valley, where Achmed made a bed for her under a tree.

But in the meantime, the wizard was not idle, searching for his horse with magic webs, in which he caught the picture of the faraway valley. Then he transformed into a kangaroo, that strange jumping animal of the desert, and in the next moment he was with Achmed and Paribandu. He lured Achmed into a deep canyon, in which a horrible snake lived. While Achmed was fighting that snake, trying to save his life, the wizard kidnapped the girl and escaped with the flying horse.

In China he wanted to sell her as a slave. A very powerful emperor lived there; he had a hump-backed jester, who amused him with his pranks and his chimes. The emperor liked Paribandu and gave many sacks of treasures to the wizards for her. Big was the emperor, and fat. Beautiful he was not. When he approached Paribandu and wanted to make her his lover, she pushed him away, crying: "No, you monster!" That made the emperor angry, so he called his jester and told him: "Do with her what you want! You can kill her, but you may also take her as your wife if you want!" "Ah, marriage! We make marriage!" the hump-backed one called out and danced with joy.

Meanwhile, the wizard was flying back to the island on birds that he had made out of the sacks of gold from the emperor. On the island, Achmed was mourning the loss of his lover, but the wizard gave Achmed to those birds: They tore him away like vultures tear a corpse away. When they found a wasteland where the earth was gaping and spewing out horror, they layed him down shackled under a big rock.


A flaming abyss opened next to Prince Achmed. A hideous woman rose out of it and stepped towards him. Was she going to kill him? He walked up to her and told her who had brought him there, and that the great wizard's animals had kidnapped him. When she heard that, she shouted: "He is my enemy, let us fight him together!" She called the monsters that served her, for she was very powerful, as powerful as the wizard. She ordered them to dive into the core of the earth and fetch weapons with which they could fight the wizard. Now she was friendly to Achmed, took him by the hand and freed him. Look how they soared through magic might, walking through the air with ease, as if they were walking on level ground. The prince shouted: "O look, down there is Paribanu, dressed for a celebration. Oh, she is going to be married with that hunch-backed jester! Let's go down there quickly and save her!"

Down they swooped like birds of prey, grabbing that noble girl. How they lay in each other's arms, Paribanu and Achmed!
But listen! The beating of wings, what does it mean? New dangers! Hosts of black creatures, horrible animals with flapping wings! "O Paribanu!" "These are the spirits of Wak-Wak, my home country. They will not tolerate my staying away from home, they will take me with them! O, the horror!" So the demons took to the air with their prey, and again Prince Achmed stood there alone, separated from his lover. He was furious, and in his anger he forced one of the birds to serve him. Racing after Paribanu, he saw the magic island from far away. The gate of Wak-Wak, and next to it endlessly high mountains. He flew into the gate, and through it.

Then, suddenly, the gates closed, and a voice told the Prince that he was not allowed to enter. "Have you heard of Aladin and his lamp," the voice said, "only that lamp can be your salvation!" Achmed stopped short, trying to recall what he knw about that name: Aladdin! Aladdin!

What monster is this? Many-armed, abominable! Big as a mountain! And look, there is a man in its claws! The prince took his magic weapons to kill it. He shot arrow after arrow, until it dropped dead. He asked the man who he was. It was Aladin, the man he was looking for! He told Achmed his story: "I used to live a quiet life in the caliph's city. While I was working in my workshop one day, a stranger of noble appearance came in and asked me to follow him to a place where immense treasures could be found. He lead me to a cave and bade me descend to the depths of the earth. There, between shiny stones, I found the marvelous lamp. "Give it to me, scoundrel!" the stranger shouted; he was waiting at the cave's entrance. When I refused, he left me behind in darkness and desparation. But I, lighting the lamp, became the master of its spirits. They helped me escape. They served me and did whatever I ordered them to do. I gave them the order to build a palace, more beautiful than any palace I had seen before. And before the sun set, they had accomplished that feat. I went to the caliph's daughter and led her home with me as my wife. But in the evening, everything had disappeared - she, the lover, as well as the incredible palace and, with it, the lamp.

The stranger had done that, but who was he? The great wizard!


"So I got up and fled the caliph's wrath. Travelling over the sea in a tiny boat, i got into a storm. I was whirled around, I was almost smashed against rocks, then I was thrown on the coast. I saw a tree with fruit that could help me recover. But as I reached out for it, the tree rose to the height of a mountain and threw off branches and leaves: It was a monster! That was when you found me, Prince Achmed, and when you saved me!"

When Aladdin had finished his story, the witch appeared and told them that Paribanu was in danger. She said that the spirits of Wak-Wak were revolting against her and only Aladin's lamp could save her. "So you must fight the wizard!" both Aladdin and Achmed begged her, "wrench the lamp from his hands and kill him, the villain!" Already the witch got up and wove magic circles in order to catch the wizard. Not before long he was with them, angry and raging.

Now began a fight like the earth has never seen one, never before and never after it. In a lion's shape, the wizard jumped at the witch in order to pin her on the ground, but she turned into a snake. He, however, took the shape of a poisonous scorpion, which she countered by changing into a rooster. Many shapes they turned into, but neither of them was stronger than the other. Until at last, the witch tore the fire down from the skies, engulfing the wizard in flames. He, too, had power over the flames, and threw many a fire towards her, but finally, finally he got weak and burned. The villainous enemy was destroyed! Now the lamp belonged to them.

Victory, victory! Now they had to hurry to Paribanu's rescue. Numberless were the demons that attacked them. But numberless were also the good spirits that came streaming out of Aladdin's lamp to fight them. And so the black power of the demons was broken forever that day, they fled desperately to the recesses of the earth. They were free now, all of them: Paribanu and Achmed, Dinarsade and Aladdin!

Once more they summoned the lamp's spirits and bade them carry them to the palace they had built in one night and that the wizard had whisked away from the ground. Happily the spirits obliged. Look what made them so glad, while it was flying through the air, light as a cloud, but still artfully created, with numberless galleries and stairs and proud towers. In front of them the house landed like an animal that was meant to carry their burden. They entered the palace, and it flew up again to bring them back to the caliph's city. There, they were greeted with measureless joy. How long they had been away, and what adventures their eyes had seen!

But the caliph embraced them all as his children, Paribanu the beautiful, who was now the wife of Achmed, the noble son, and Aladdin, his lovely daughter Dinarsade's husband. The caliph lifted his hands and blessed them all.

THE PLATES




1. Achmed on the magic horse


2. At the caliph's court


3. The magic horse takes Achmed into the air with it...


4. ...so the wizard is taken prisoner


5. Achmed with Paribanu's servants


6. Paribanu flying to the forest lake in her feathery costume


7. Her nightly bath


8. Achmed following Paribanu


9. The lovers in the mountains


10. Achmed and Paribanu


11. Achmed fighting with the snake in the canyon


12. The emperor of China's jester playing the chimes


13. Paribanu is sold to the emperor


14. The emperor pressing Paribanu


15. The wizard turns the sacks of gold into birds


16. The hunchback plays the flute for Paribanu


17. Achmed with the witch


18. Paribanu in her wedding attire


19. The wedding procession


20. Achmed shooting the monster


21. The monster threatening Aladdin


22. Aladdin tells Achmed his story


23. The wizard calls on Aladdin in his workshop


24. The wizard leads Aladdin past the caliph's palace


25. Dinarsade, the caliph's daughter, playing chess


26. Aladdin discovers the magic lamp in the cave


27. Aladdin greets Dinarsade


28. Aladdin at sea in the storm


29. The battle between the witch and the wizard


30. The wizard and the witch fighting in the shape of a vulture and a rooster


31. Aladdin fights the demons of Wak-Wak with his magic lamp


32. The homecoming
This important film is available at Amazon... Adventures of Prince Achmed DVD

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Filmography: Terry-Toons' Temperamental Lion

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.

Today, we digitized some great Terrytoons model sheets that Carlo Vinci's family loaned to us...






This one is particularly interesting to me...


...because it's from one of the very best Terrytoons of the time, "The Temperamental Lion". Connie Rasinski created the goofy Bert Lahr lion character as the "King of the Jungle" for the classic cartoon "Doomsday" (1938) as well as "The Nutty Network" (1939). The model was adapted a bit in the late 1940s for "The Lyin' Lion", a film that includes some funny Jim Tyer animation...


...but the character was never better animated than he was by Carlo Vinci in this short... Check out his great scene of the lion singing!







The Temperamental Lion (Terry/1940)
(Quicktime 7 / 14.5 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Many thanks to the Vinci family for sharing their treasures with us!

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.18.08
.

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Filmography: Bambi

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.

Archive supporter, Mark Kirkland stopped by the other day with his collection of artwork from Bambi. It's a nice overview of the film... color keys, animation drawings, model sheets. Many thanks for sharing these with us, Mark!







Bambi's Father
Animation Drawing by Milt Kahl


Bambi's Mother
Animation Drawing by Frank Thomas


Model Sheet by Marc Davis



Character Design by Marc Davis


The wonderful thing about our digital archive is that it allows collectors to share their treasures with the world. If you have artwork you would like to loan us to be digitized, please stop by for a visit.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.03.08
.

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Happy Halloween! Three More Tricky Treats

Weird Creepy Awful Spooky Ghastly Comics (1953)


Swing, You Sinners (1930)


Sci Fi and Horror Mexican Lobby Cards
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Happy Halloween! Dulac's Poe

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.


The Raven
In the golden age of book illustration, there were two artists who led the field... Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. Both of these artists were prolific, but of the two, Dulac was the most stylistically versatile. Today, we digitized one of Dulac's most unique books, The Poetical Works of Edgar Allen Poe (1912).

Dulac took full advantage of the printing technology of his day to create images full of deep shadow, inviting the viewer to peer into the details in the darkness. Note for instance the figure in The Raven. His body falls into the shadow across the chair and rug, defined only by the cool shadowy colors of his trousers against the warm ones of the background. Dulac's images perfectly capture Poe's dark, melancholy moods, as well as the cosmic, dreamlike situations of poems like Israfel. Light is used to great effect with eerie, otherworldly uplighting in To One In Paradise, cool moonlight through an open window in The Sleeper, and a pinpoint light source in To Helen.

One of the genres of storytelling that has been rarely employed in animation is gothic horror. Looking at these images, it's clear that animation would be capable of creating a dark, sinister world even more vivid than could be ever be created in live action.




The Bells


The Bells


To One In Paradise


Lenore


To Helen


The Haunted Palace


The Sleeper


Eldorado


The Conqueror Worm


To The River


To Helen


To - -


Israfel


Dreamland

We will have more artwork by Edmund Dulac in the coming weeks. I'd like to introduce our newest Archive Alliance... nocloo.com, the home of the Children's Book Illustrators Archive. In the coming weeks and months, nocloo.com will be sharing scans from their collection of vintage illustrated books. Check out their website and their galleries of images for a wealth of information on classic illustrators.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.28.08
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Happy Halloween! Hittin' The Trail For Hallelujah Land

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


I want to take a moment to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. Cartoons have been giving moviegoers "the willies" all the way back to Disney's Skeleton Dance. Just about every studio made great cartoons featuring ghosts, skeletons and witches. One of the rarest is the cartoon we are presenting today.


In 1932, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising made a pair of cartoons starring a character named "Piggy". These two cartoons are among the best of the early Warner Bros. titles, featuring jazzy soundtracks by Abe Lyman and Frank Marsales. The first was titled You Don't Know What You're Doing, and if you've ever seen it, you'll never forget the surreal, drunken motorcycle ride through city streets that forms the climax of the picture.


Piggy's second, and last starring outing was Hitting The Trail For Hallelujah Land. A sequence involving "Uncle Tom" being terrorized by skeletons in a graveyard has kept this cartoon off television for many years, but when it comes right down to it, there's nothing really offensive about this cartoon.


It is, however a masterful example of musical timing. Every scene swings to the beat, and the overall pacing of the film has a musical structure with a statement of theme, followed by variations, a scary bridge sequence and hot finish. (For more information on this technique, see our previous post on Musical Timing Rediscovered.)


Hitting The Trail For Hallelujah Land (Warner/1932)
(Quicktime 7 / 15.8 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

There'll be more Halloween fun coming up. Stay tuned!

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.25.08
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Biography: Canemaker on Tytla

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 4 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great biographies of important artists.

John Canemaker lent us a copy of an article he wrote for an exhibit of artwork by Bill Tytla. Tytla was a giant among animators, known for his solid, dimensional drawings and convincing depiction of weight and mass.

Here is the complete article...


































If you enjoyed this article, you'll also want to check out... Tytla At Terry: Mighty Mouse Meets Jekyll &' Hyde Cat 1940, The Pencil Test of Art Babbitt's Best Scene, our Profile of Carlo Vinci, and Remembering Berny Wolf

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.23.08
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History: Walt's War

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the history of animation told through the careers of great animators.

Here's a fascinating article from Life magazine on the Disney Studios during the wartime years...











Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.21.08
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Illustration: John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books.


Like many of the artists we feature here on this blog, John Bauer is a name that not many people know. His career was relatively short, but his influence was far reaching.

Born in 1882 in Sweden, Bauer studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. In 1904, he illustrated his first book, Lappland, but in 1907 he began work on a series of Christmas annuals that would make him famous. Bland Tomtar Och Troll (Among Trolls and Elves) is a Swedish tradition, beginning in 1907 and continuing to this very day. I'm afraid I don't speak Swedish, so I can't speak for the folk tales Bauer is illustrating, but the illustrations are stunning.

Bauer had a way with trolls... they are grotesque, yet appealing. The simple, yet elegant compositions conveyed the essence of the image clearly with a sense of humor that both children and adults could understand. His style influenced generations of artists from Gustaf Tenggren (who took over the Bland Tomtar Och Troll series after Bauer's death in a shipwreck in 1918), Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen to Brian Froud and Jim Henson (The Dark Crystal). This particular edition of Bland Tomtar Och Troll is from 1915, but the images are timeless.













MORE BY JOHN BAUER







Very little information on Bauer exists outside of his native country of Sweden. There is a museum dedicated to his work in the city where he was born. If you have any information on this great artist, please let us know about it in the comments below.

See also.. Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929, Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll (1934)

To see Bauer's influence on contemporary illustrators, see... Gustaf Tenggren's Grimm's Fairy Tales, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales, and Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.20.08
.

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Illustration: Great LP Record Jackets

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about 50s children's book illustrators.


Archive volunteer and resident video guru, Eric Graf has amassed an amazing collection of novelty and children's records from the 50s and 60s. He brought a stack by the other day to be scanned. Check out how these covers make you want to rush to your phonograph to play the record. Tiny, badly designed CD and DVD covers just don't have the same impact. Thanks, Eric for sharing these with us!

















For more amazing illustration for kids, see our postings on Little Golden Books

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.16.08
.

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Life Drawing: Who Invented The Three Fingered Hand?

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.


Mickey Mouse Hand Model Sheet by Les Clark ca. 1932
Grim Natwick was a remarkable artist. His career as an animator spanned the entire history of animation, from silent Mutt & Jeff cartoons all the way through Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler. I don't know of anyone more qualified to answer the age-old question...

Who invented the three fingered hand?
Grim studied art in Vienna soon after the end of World War I. Included with this article are scans of Grim's anatomy studies from a little before his studies there. Some of you may see a similarity with Bridgeman's wonderful books on constructive anatomy. Grim was in New York when Bridgeman was teaching there, so it's entirely possible that these drawings were done studying under Bridgeman himself.



DESIGN FOR ANIMATION
By Grim Natwick

Who invented the three-fingered hand? Someone way back in the dark ages of animation got tired of drawing hands with four fingers and simply left one off, and cartoon hands have been much easier to animate ever since. It was a stroke of genius. The four fingered hand disappeared from animation until "Snow White" (1937). Somehow a pretty girl didn't look right with only three fingers. But the Seven Dwarfs still had three fingered hands.


Characters and drawing styles changed as animation became a popular form of entertainment. Straight lines were changed to curved lines- square shapes became round shapes. Curved figures moved better on the screen and eliminated what we used to call "strobe".


Mickey Mouse was a good example of a character designed to eliminate the early problems of animation. His head was a ball with a rounded lump for a nose, a few circles for eyes, and two frisbees for ears. His body was shaped like a pear or gourd. Four pieces of garden hose were used for arms and legs. His hands were just two bunches of peeled bananas. Four old-fashioned donuts served as cuffs and anklets. He had a hair snake for a tail, and his shoes were two boxing gloves with the thumbs cut off. He animated perfectly. Mickey has changed through the years, but the formula is still the same.


By 1930, special artists were assigned the job of designing characters for animation. Cartoon stories had become more sophisticated and so had the viewing audience. The characters became individuals- stars- a part of Hollywood. A whole galaxy of heros and heroines have become famous in distant corners of the globe. At a recent animation festival in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, several Chinese animators appeared wearing Betty Boop buttons. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker and the Flintstones are as well known in Paris, London and even Gnosjo, Sweden, as they are in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. They have become world classics, and good design and good drawing have made them so.


The great animators were almost always good draughtsmen. Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, John Lounsbery, Ward Kimball- These men drew exceptionally well. Among the animators who preceded them, those who could stay in the saddle when the wind was blowing were talents like Dick Huemer, Bill Tytla and the enigmatic Art Babbitt. Babbitt always said that he hated to draw, yet he animated the "most beautiful of all Queens" in Disney's "Snow White". He drew the complicated Mushroom Dance in Fantasia, an animation masterpiece that required the mind of a ballet dancer and the patience of a Saint, which Babbitt is not. One could name a host of beautifully drawn characters that Art Babbitt "hated to draw".


How vital a part does drawing play in animation? Is it more important than a dramatic sense, a delicate feeling for humor, spacing and timing?

While an animator may borrow craftsmanship from an actor, he is faced every day with playing a new role, acting out a new scene, breathing life into a new character. His tools are ordinary sheets of paper, and an ordinary lead pencil. If his drawings lack magic, a scene will be a failure.


Can one compare animation with the more dignified art of easel painting? Is a Ward Kimball any less talented than Seurat? Or is Bill Tytla less gifted than Raol Dufy? If we transpose the question to a more familiar area of the culinary arts- the Art of Cookery- one could say that one chef prepares a meal of barbecued spare ribs with Spanish sauce and chilled beer; while the other serves wild pheasant under glass with Rhone River wine and truffles. Either meal could taste best at a chosen time and a chosen place.


If Claude Monet had tried to draw a Mickey Mouse, the result would probably have been a real gnocchi- a dodo! On the other hand, if you had asked a Les Clark or a Freddie Moore to paint purple haystacks or pointillistic water-lillies, the result might have been equally disappointing. They are two different art forms.


For more posts on Grim Natwick, see... Grim Natwick's Scrapbook and the Grim Article on Michael Sporn's Splog.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.15.08
.

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Comic Books: Huckleberry Hound Weekly

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.

Another great item lent to us to digitize by Kent Butterworth... This time it's a British newsstand comic from March 28th, 1964 featuring the Hanna-Barbera Characters...











The interesting thing about this piece isn't so much the quality of the artwork... it's pretty generic... it's the quantity of it. I eliminated a few pages of puzzles, games and stories, but the majority of the sheets are devoted to large, full-page comic stories. You would never see such a generous collection of comics in a publication that sells for as little as this today. But there is wisdom behind the generosity... The best way to get kids to watch the Huckleberry Hound Show (and buy Kelloggs cereal) is to engage them with the characters and situations. What better way to do that than a loss-leader newsstand comic?

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.14.08
.

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Pinups: Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.


Roll me over, in the clover...
We continue to work on scanning cartoons from Chad Coyle's wonderful collection of vintage Playboy magazines. Previously, we featured Erich Sokol and Eldon Dedini. Today we focused on Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi.

While both have strong, clear compositions, their rendering styles are quite different. Sneyd used layers of watercolor washes and delicate transparancies to create depth, while Interlandi slashed out his forms and textures with a bold, confident style. When you see the cartoons interspersed in the magazine, you might not realize how different each artist is, but when you see the cartoons grouped together by artist, you can really get a feeling for their individual style.

DOUG SNEYD

Can I stay and help you clean up the mess?


You came highly recommended, but I had no idea...


And this time, be more careful!


I won't be bothering you and Pop
with any more embarassing questions!


He wants to know if we make deliveries.


PHIL INTERLANDI

We changed our minds!


He'd rather fight than switch.






You have a dirty mind. I like that in a man.


Daphne! Get your butt in here!


The starter is fresh!


All I could get out of him was name, rank and serial number...
and an ingenious American invention called a "quickie".


Pay attention, damn it, pay attention!

For more info on the great cartoonists who worked for Playboy in the 1960s, see our posts on... Erich Sokol and Eldon Dedini.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.13.08
.

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Biography: Louise Zingarelli

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the careers of great animators.

Recently, there's been a flurry of posts around the blogosphere about development executives and the impact they have on the cartoons you see in theaters and on television. See John K's post, Why Rock Stars Should Be Animation Executives and the shocking AWN article he links to, Development Execs: Who They Are And How They Got There. It's an eye-opening read.

Today, we digitized a section of storyboard from one of the biggest flops in recent times, Ralph Bakshi's Cool World. This film could be the poster child for devastating executive interference. Paramount bought a hard-R, gritty, sexy, noir horror/thriller from Bakshi and proceeded to revise it into a low-rent Roger Rabbit aimed at teenagers. By the time the film was completed, it bore little resemblence to Bakshi's original concept.

But I'm not going to talk about that sorry story today... Instead, I'm going to tell you about an artist who worked on Cool World who you might not know about, but should... Louise Zingarelli. Louise was a very good friend of mine, and I'd like to share my personal take on her along with this section of storyboard that vividly illustrates her amazing talents.



Louise Zingarelli was the toughest individual I've ever met... and one of the sweetest. If she loved you, man! she REALLY loved you. If she hated you, Boy! you better watch out.

"Hate" isn't a strong enough word for what Louise felt if she didn't like someone. She had a special word for it... SKIEVE. To skieve something was to hate it to the point of physical revulsion. Louise skieved REAL GOOD. She skieved lots of things... parking tickets, Canadian animators, dentist appointments, Jesse Jackson and even Charles Soloman.



Charles made the mistake of criticizing Louise's scenes in The Chipmunk Adventure in the L.A. Times. He wrote that they were "heavily dependent on the crutch of rotoscoping". When she read that, Louise flew into a rage. She hollered, "There wasn't a single frame of roto in the whole goddamn picture! I didn't use a CRUTCH! I used my HEAD, which is more than I can say for Charles friggin' Soloman!" Louise brewed and fumed about that article for years, and finally got her chance for revenge at Grim Natwick's 100th birthday party. When Charles got up to speak, Louise made a noise like a leaky radiator. The Canadian animators on the other side of the room picked it up, and pretty soon she had the whole place going. Charles never knew what hit him.



Louise always reminded me of the tomboy girl in Our Gang- the one who was small, but when her big brother got picked on by the neighborhood bullies, she would roll up her sleeves and wipe the floor with them. Louise was short, but if she was coming at you with THAT look in her eye, you'd swear she was ten feet tall.



Louise hated a lot of things, but she saved special hatred for "The Business"... those words would come out of her mouth dripping in vitriol. "THE BIZZZZZZNESSSSS!" You would need a rug doctor after she said it to clean up all the slime. If Louise knew I was writing about her here in a blog read by people in "the business", she would kick my ass all the way to hell and back.



Now I don't want to make Louise sound like an unpleasant person. On the contrary, she was one of the most thoughtful and considerate people I ever met. I spent many evenings at her house, sharing in her gracious hospitality. She made the most amazing chicken in her Weber grill, and she taught me the value of keeing a bottle of good Russian vodka in the freezer, "just in case". If Louise loved you, you never had the chance to doubt or forget it. She loved just as passionately as she hated.



Louise was a great artist. She could paint with Prismacolors like nobody else. She would build up layers of colors that glowed on the paper. Her characters had an indefinable sense of "ugly-cute"... never cloying, always real. Some animators complained, saying her character designs were unanimatable, but by the time they ended up on the screen, her unusual shapes and true to life personality gave them extra life.


Louise was the fastest artist I ever met. On Cool World, she single handedly laid out all the girl scenes, keying out the poses until they almost animated. Her average footage on layout was over seventy feet a week.

At Bagdasarian, we shared an office. I think I was the only person who ever survived sharing an office with Louise. One day, I gave her an incidental character to design. She sat around sipping her coffee and smoking casually. I finally asked her if she was going to get around to doing the drawing, because the deadline was looming. She said, "Here's a good bet. Get your watch out. I'll design this character in one minute. You take the sketch to Ross for approval. I betcha two bits he not only approves it, he says he LOVES it." "You're on!" I said.

So looking at my watch, I called out, "Ready... set... GO!" Louise just sat there smiling at me. I said, "Time has started." She nodded and set her cigarette down... smoothed out her paper... "Twenty seconds." I called out. She sat down and set in to work on the drawing. Her pencil flew over the paper- beautiful sweeping lines, completely original shapes. She finished the character with time to spare and tore it off her pad. I took the sketch next door to Ross' office. He was on the phone, so I left it on the corner of his desk and went back to Louise. She was smiling like a Cheshire Cat. A couple of minutes later, we heard from the other side of the wall, "FAAAABUUULOOUSS!" Louise casually raised an eyebrow and quietly said, "Pay up."


After Cool World wrapped, Louise moved back to her hometown of Chicago. I heard from her a couple of times, but we lost touch. I later found out that she had moved back to Laguna Niguel and was undergoing kemotherapy for cancer. She fought it as bravely as all of her other battles, and for a short time it seemed like she had licked it. But it came back hard. She was very ill at the end. For weeks she lay in a coma. She was so private about her battle, her best friends didn't know she was gone for a month afterwards. She chose to spend her last days quietly with her cats painting at the ocean.

I owe Louise big time. She championed me when I was just starting out in animation, and she never wavered in her faith in me. She was a great friend and I miss her a lot.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

See also, Ralph Bakshi's Phone Doodles

10.08.08
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Pinups: Alberto Vargas

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.


We're very grateful to archive supporter, Chad Coyle for allowing us to digitize his collection of cartoons and illustrations from 1960s Playboy magazines. You might remember our previous posts on Erich Sokol, Eldon Dedini, Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi. Today, we focus on the "Grand Old Man" of pinup art, Alberto Vargas.

Vargas was born in Peru in 1896, and travelled to Europe with his family in 1911. His father was a photographer, and Vargas was exposed at an early age to the airbrush as a retouching tool. He studied to be a photographer, and worked in New York as a retoucher for a time, but Florenz Ziegfeld hired him as an illustrator for his Follies in 1917. He scraped by through the depression illustrating for various publications and movie studios. When George Petty left Esquire in 1940, Vargas took over his position with the magazine. Even though this brought much-needed exposure for Vargas' work, the contract with Esquire was extremely unfair. The magazine even trademarked the name Vargas had been working under... "Varga" and wouldn't allow him to use it for any other work. Vargas sued and broke the contract in 1950.

Vargas added the "s" to his name and proceeded to rebuild his career, illustrating playing cards and taking freelance work for True magazine. In 1960, he was hired as an illustrator for Playboy, the venue that made him famous. The "Vargas Girl" represented a high level of perfection in beauty, erotic- but never vulgar. Even when Playboy would have allowed him to depict full frontal nudity, Vargas always kept his models discretely draped. He worked for Playboy until his 90th birthday in 1976, when he retired. Vargas passed away in 1982 at the age of 96.

Completing this group of postings on the Playboy artists of the 1960s, here is the work of the great Alberto Vargas...

VARGA IN THE 1920s









VARGAS IN THE 1960s






If you find this posting to be useful, you should also see our posting on George Petty's Ridgid Tools Calendars.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.07.08
.

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Biography: Three Interesting Documents

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the careers of great animators.


A couple of days ago on The Animation Guild Blog, Steve Hulett posted a portion of a letter to Grim Natwick from Roy Disney that I gave to Tom Sito to use in his new book, Drawing The Line. The xerox of the second page had been misplaced, so I'm posting it complete here along with the story behind it.

GRIM NATWICK JOB OFFER FROM ROY DISNEY

In 1930, Ub Iwerks unexpectedly quit Disney to form his own studio with Pat Powers. This left Disney in a very tough position. He had contracts to fill for cartoon shorts without a lead man to supervise. Disney hired Ted Sears away from Fleischer, and encouraged him to recruit other top animation talent in New York to fill the void left by Iwerks' departure. Sears' top prospect was his coworker at Fleischer, Grim Natwick.

Grim was comfortable in New York, and hadn't considered moving West, but Sears told him that Disney was doing great work and there was money to be made. When Sears relocated to Hollywood, Natwick sent word with him that he was willing to talk with Disney about making the move. Roy Disney wasted no time in making the trip to New York to try to get Grim to commit. Grim invited him over to his apartment, and they spent the afternoon relaxing, eating and listening to a ball game on the radio- doing just about everything but talk business.

When time came for Roy to leave, he asked Grim what it would take to get him to join Disney. Grim really didn't want to move, but he thought Roy was a nice guy, and he didn't want to hurt his feelings. So he told him that he would go to Hollywood for $400 a week. (At that time, he was making $50 a week at Fleischer!) Roy told him that he would have to discuss it with Walt, and he would get back to him. Grim figured that he wouldn't hear back, but a couple of weeks later, this letter arrived in the mail...



Grim was always the sort of person who welcomed new opportunities, and the prospect of making nearly three times what he was being paid by Fleischer was enough to make him willing to go West. He called a few of his friends who had already made the trip to Hollywood and asked them if the Disney brothers were on the level. His friends told him about Iwerks' unfriendly departure from the studio, and they explained that Walt and Roy were just businessmen- that Iwerks had been the real creative spark behind Mickey Mouse. Some of Grim's coworkers at Fleischer had already joined Iwerks at his studio in West Los Angeles, so Grim had them offer his regards to Ub. Within a few weeks, Grim was packed up in his car driving West to work for Iwerks for $75 a week!

In his later years, Grim would laugh about being crazy enough to pass up $200 a week in the height of the depression. It's likely that no one at the Disney Studio without the Disney surname was making that much at the time. Grim made a good choice though. When he arrived, Iwerks handed over the day to day supervision of the films to him, and he directed some wonderful Flip the Frog, Willie Whopper and Comicolor cartoons along with many of the same kid animators he had supervised at Fleischer. When Grim heard that Disney was starting work on a cartoon feature in 1934, he couldn't hold off any longer. He joined the Disneys and did the lion's share of the animation of the title character in Snow White.

For more on this subject, see... Grim Natwick's Scrapbook

LETTER FROM CHARLES MINTZ TO VIRGINIA DAVIS

Virginia Davis played the live action Alice in Disney's Alice Comedies, beginning with the first film, "Alice's Wonderland" in 1923. Her family relocated to Hollywood from Kansas City to follow Disney, and in 1925, her mother decided the time had come to demand more money for her services. There was no lack of child actresses in Hollywood at the time, so Walt and Roy promptly called the bluff and replaced her. Virginia's mother went to the department store and bought dolls of every major cartoon star of the day, and photographed Virginia holding them. She sent the photos to the producers of the cartoons, along with a letter subtly suggesting that "Disney's Alice likes your cartoons!" It didn't result in any jobs for the young actress, but it did produce one very interesting letter in response...

This letter is from Charles Mintz- the man who, along with his wife Margaret Winkler, engineered the takeover of the Disney Studio in 1928. Yes, this letter is proof that Disney's "Alice" offered to work for the man who stole Disney's "Oswald"!



DICK HUEMER'S 1945 DISNEY CONTRACT

I stumbled across a pair of contracts between Dick Huemer and the Disney Studios. The first was dated 1936, and the one I'm posting here is from 1945. The two documents are identical, with one small exception... the insertion of the clause, "...subject further to any subsisting and current agreements entered into with recognized labor unions having jurisdiction over the Employee". This simple phrase was brought about by a battle that almost tore the studio apart. The fascinating story of the Disney strike is told in Tom Sito's new book Drawing The Line. I hope that Tom or Steve Huelett will remark further on this document in the comments below and in The Animation Guild Blog.






For more information on Dick Huemer's amazing career, see... Dick Huemer's Family's Site.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.02.08
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Comic Strips: Rube Goldberg's Side Show

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about comics.


Rube Goldberg was known as the "Dean of American Cartoonists". His longtime friend Grantland Rice wrote...

I recall those great Goldberg cartoons of forty-odd years ago. While introducing an element of broad burlesque, they were packed with real humor and were all based on a sound philiosophy of life. His cartoons ran under such headings as "This All Comes Under The Head Of Pleasure", "They All Look Good When You're Far Away", "Now That You've Got It, What Are You Going To Do With It". "Father Was Right", "Foolish Questions" and many others. Each was based on the kind of universal experience that almost every one of us stumbles into at one time or another. Rube had a knack of looking underneath the surface and discovering things that only seemed obvious after he had pointed them out with his fun-stirring pen.

Here's the entry on Goldberg from Martin Sheridan's book, Comics And Their Creators...






Goldberg was best known for his crazy inventions, which are featured at the bottom of each one of these "Side Show" Sunday pages. These comics were on the back sides of the Milt Gross pages we've been scanning courtesy of master animator, Mark Kausler. If you see him, give him a tip of the hat for generously sharing his amazing collection with all of us. I have made the thumbnails smaller this time to fit more pages in. Click on them and spend some quality time reading these great comic pages from the late 1930s.







For links to more amazing golden age newpaper comics, see... The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.2.08
.

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Illustration: Kay Nielsen's Hansel and Gretel

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.


Today, I'd like to introduce a new Archive Alliance, nocloo.com... Dedicated to the work of classic children's book illustrators, this site is a labor of love for bibliophile, Minh Lai. At nocloo.com, you'll find catalog listings of books organized by artist, and galleries of illustrations from rare first editions. Minh has generously offered to donate high resolution, carefully color corrected scans of these precious books to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Other collectors are doing the same... Dan Goodsell loaned his amazing collection of artwork from the Ray Patin Studios to be digitized, and I contributed scans of my own collection of Mexican Lobby Cards.

If you have a wonderful book, video or collection of artwork that you would like to contribute to our archive, drop me an email for our digitizing guidelines. If you have a good quality scanner, you can scan the images yourself, or you can drop the items off at the Animation Archive in Burbank to be digitized. This is a great way to share your collection with artists, students and researchers and use it to make a positive impact on the art of animation.

Here then, courtesy of nocloo.com is Kay Nielsen's Hansel and Gretel...












For more beautiful illustrations by Kay Nielsen, see Twelve Dancing Princesses and East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

I will be posting more amazing scans from Minh Lai's collection over the coming weeks. Please bookmark our homepage and check back regularly,.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.01.08
.

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Illustration: Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books.



Arthur Rackham was one of the most influential illustrators who ever lived. If you aren't familiar with his work, see Bud Plant's biography. These scans are from a first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales from 1909. This book is packed with amazing color plates and ink sketches.

Along with Edmund Dulac, (see our previous postings of his work... Poe's Poetical Works, H. C. Andersen Stories, and Tanglewood Tales) Rackham was one of the most popular book illustrators of the early 20th century.

Walt Disney admired Rackham's watercolor and pen & ink style, and instructed Gustaf Tenggren (see our previous postings of his work... Small Fry and the Winged Horse, Three Early Tenggren Books, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and The Little Trapper) to work with Claude Coates and Sam Armstrong to adapt it for use in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In animation backgrounds however, the sinewy Rackham line was overly busy, distracting from the characters; so Tenggren evolved towards the more dimensional painting style in Pinocchio, which set the standard for Disney cartoons throughout the 1940s.






























If you would like to explore more golden age illustration, see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The Archive Project. If you find the postings on this website to be worthwhile, please do what you can to Support The Archive Project. Every bit helps.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

9.30.08
.

Stumble It!

Filmography: The Wan Brothers' Monkey King Features

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


Cartoonist, illustrator, painter, Renaissance man Milton Knight stopped by the archive this week. He brought along a donation to the archive database... an amazing DVD trilogy of Chinese animated features called Uproar in Heaven.... The earliest one is titled Princess Iron Fan...



This bizarre animated feature was made just a few short years after Disney's Snow White, but it more closely resembles the early 30s Fleischer cartoons. It's a strange mix of primitive drawing, technical rotoscoping and imaginative metamorphosis... even a sexy girl!



At the bottom of this post, you'll find a documentary on the making of this incredible film. If you have any more information to add, please post the information to the comments link below, and I'll add them to this article.


Princess Iron Fan (Chinese/1941)
(Quicktime 7 / 17.5 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.



Directed by Wan Laiming, written by Wai Laiming and Li Kuero, and animated by the Shanghai Animation Studio, these films are based on the "Monkey King Saga" which also inspired Alakazam the Great.


The first installment of this series was produced in China in 1941, and the third was released in 1964. These color images and a the clip below are from the second installment, released in 1961.



The design reminds me in a strange way of Disney's Sleeping Beauty which was released at around the same time.



Uproar In Heaven II (Chinese/1961)
(Quicktime 7 / 11.5 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.


On the DVD is a documentary on the making of the films, narrated in Chinese. It's an amazing look at pioneering animators working in a totally different culture than ours. Archive supporter, Yinghua Moore generously offered to provide a capsule translation of the narration for us in English. Here then is the documentary...

Uproar In Heaven Documentary (Chinese/2005)
(Quicktime 7 / 75 MB)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

And here is the translation...


The Uproar in Heaven films (Monkey King Havok in Heaven / Hue And Cry Over The Sky / Big Trouble) were directed by Wan Laiming, one of the early pioneers of art films in China. These animated films were so popular in China that Wan is regarded as a treasured artist by the Chinese people. Wai Laiming had three brothers- Vancomyein Toad, the twin brother who was moon to Wan Laiming's sun; Wan Chaochen and Wan Dihuan. They are all well known in China as "The Wan Brothers".


They were born in Nanjing, on the banks of the Yangzi River. Their father, a businessman, expected them to learn a trade from books, so they could make a lot of money when they grew up. But their mother encouraged them to cut paper into the shapes of people and birds, and the sons enjoyed art more than book-learning. When they were young, they performed puppet shows with their paper-cut characters, based on a story from the four classic novels titled "Journey to the West", the books that document the legendary Monkey King epic.


In 1916, the family moved to Shanghai. Wan Laiming took a job working for the Shanghai Commercial Press, and held positions in the Department of Fine Arts and the Department of Activities Movie Service starting in 1919. Inspired by American cartoons, China's shadow puppet plays, and cinematic techniques he saw in live action films, Wan Laiming began making his own animated films. His brothers joined him at the Shanghai Commercial Press shortly after they graduated from art schools. Together, they made the advertising film, "Shuzhendong Chinese Typewriter" (1925), which marked the beginning of their animation career.


In 1926, they made their first silent animated cartoon short, "Studio In A Row"; and in 1935, they made their first sound cartoon, "The Camel Presentation Dance". After the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan, the Wan Brothers, (with the exception of Wan Duhuan, who had started a photo studio) moved to Wuhan and produced the propaganda films, "Anti-Japanese War Slogan" and "Song of Resistance".


The first full length cartoon feature was made by Walt Disney in 1937, and in 1940, after returning to Shanghai, the Wan Brothers began work on their own 8,000 foot, 80 minute long sound cartoon film, "Tieshangongzhu", completing it a year later. This film lay a sound foundation for the Wan Brothers' career in animation production. After its completion, the Wan Brothers moved to Hong Kong for a few years, and in 1954, they returned one by one to New China, where they became directors at the Shanghai Animated Film Studio. They devoted all of their time and energies from that point on to making animated films for New China.


The 1961 film in the "Uproar in Heaven" series is the culmination of all of Wan Laiming's painstaking efforts. He later recalled how the crew made the movie...

The script of "Uproar in Heaven" was adapted from one of the four classic novels, "Journey to the West". Li Kerou and I were asked to write the story. The first thing we worried about was whether we would dare to present the story as it was told in the book. It was a sensitive issue at the time. We studied the first seven chapters of "Journey to the West" and believed it to have profound significance- the sharp contrasts of conflict and struggle between the oppressor and oppressed within the mythological context. In "Uproar in Heaven", the dramatic conflict is mainly between the Monkey King and the rulers headed up by Emperor Jade. Throughout a series of adventures, the Monkey King matures, and uses his courageous ingenuity, unyielding character and tenacity to prevail.


The Monkey King has the characteristics of a real monkey- He's a lively and nimble prankster. But he is also a God that can change 72 times, or become invisible at will. Human beings certainly do not have these features. He is also thoughtful and upright, so in the shaping of the character, it was necessary to exaggerate some aspects and use our imagination. Zhang Guangyu, the main designer on the film, together with Yan Dingxian and Lin Wenxiao made the characters in the film come vividly to life, and they deserve a great deal of credit for the success of the film.


For each scene, we paid particular attention to the setting and atmosphere in order to unify the scenes with the personality and style of the characters. We absorbed the best essence of Chinese folk art tradition, and added to it our own imagination. As a result, the film has a very special flavor. Because of the fantasized atmosphere of the myth, we strived to construct a unity of rich colors, refinement toward simplicity and a shaping of the images that is more "vague" than "real". By doing this, we achieved a greater artistic effect.

The pacing of the film adopted many techniques of montage, so the story develops quickly, avoiding a slow unfolding of the plot. We made use of typical Chinese folk music- the drums and percussion instruments commonly used in Peking opera. This added a strong sense of rhythm to the action of the figures.


The director of photography on the picture was Duan Xiaoxun. She later described how they shot the effects on the Monkey King's weapon, and the magnificent palaces of the heavens...

The Monkey King's weapon is called the "Jingubang". It looks like a glittering red stick with yellow on both ends. In order to make it glow and sparkle, we employed multiple exposures, and it proved to be a very successful technique in the film.


The voices were provided by many famous actors of the time. Among them were Qiu Yiefeng (Monkey King), Fu Runsheng (Emperor Jade), and Shang Hua (Taibaijinxing). Their excellent work added a great deal to the film.


After more than a year, and nearly 70,000 drawings, the image of the Monkey King finally appeared on the big screen. Wan Laiming's decades old dream had come true. In the 1980s, the Wan Brothers were awarded an honor by the Chinese government for devoting their life to Chinese arts and filmmaking. Wan Laiming passed away 1999 at the age of 98. His tombstone reads, "Founder of the Chinese Animation Industry".


If you would like to order a copy of this DVD (PAL format only), see... YesAsia.com

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

9.27.08
.

Stumble It!

Biography: John K on Flintstones Animators

Meet The Stars of the Flintstones
by John Kricfalusi (from The Flintstones laserdisc set)


When I grew up, I used to watch "The Flintstones" in syndication every day and I began to notice that the characters would look different in each cartoon. I eventually figured out that they must have been drawn by different animators, each of whom had their own individual traits.


Comic book nerds like me have always been able to tell the difference- say, between a Steve Ditko Spiderman and a Todd McFarlane Spiderman; but in animation, the tendency for most studios is to force all the artists to try to draw the characters the same way. This is called drawing "on model".


Ed Benedict, who designed the Flintstones is really mad that all the animators drew the characters in their own style, or "off model". Luckily for us, Hanna-Barbera didn't have time to have the animators learn to draw the characters before they started animating!


I love cartoons where you can tell the animators apart. Bob Clampett's Warner Bros. cartoons are like this. And so are the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The tricky part is figuring out what names belong to what drawing and animation styles! "The Flintstones" when it runs in syndication, has a stock set of credits on the end of each episode. They list four animators. And, if the names ever agree with the persons who actually animated a particular episode, it's sheer coincidence. And get this... In the early days of Hanna-Barbera, one animator would animate a whole 25 minute cartoon by himself!


So, this is what we've done for the likes of you- Henry Porch (my sound editor) and I have assembled clips of each animators' work so you can finally figure out who's who! I know that each and every one of you is licking your lips in anticipation as one of life's more succulent mysteries is about to disrobe and reveal its undergarments for you.
--John Kricfalusi

KEN MUSE


Click on the image to see a movie of Ken Muse scenes.
Ken Muse's style is easy to spot when you see it, but hard to describe in words. That's why we put the clips together! An obvious trait of his is the way he draws Fred's eye bags. The line under his eye is parallel to it. Also, he draws upside down smile lines. He generally puts less expressions and poses into his cartoons than the other animators do. He's sort of the bland one, although some of the coolest drawings ever of the Flintstones are in "The Swimming Pool". Check out Fred driving his car in the beginning of the cartoon. Or Fred lying down and staring out the window. This is before he got used to drawing the characters and began drawing "on model". Muse worked on Tom & Jerry before Hanna and Barbera opened up their own studio.

DON PATTERSON


Click on the image to see a movie of Don Patterson scenes.
Don Patterson is a very funny animator. He loves to do wacky walks and runs and goofy eye takes. He never seems to repeat expressions and actions. He custom designs his work to match what's going on in the story. He draws the characters "off model" when they need to act. He sometimes give the characters "Smurf eyes"- the two eyeball whites joined into one. Patterson came from Walter Lantz's studio, where he animated Woody Woodpecker and Wally Walrus and all your other favorites.

CARLO VINCI


Click on the image to see a movie of Carlo Vinci scenes.
Carlo Vinci is the master of Flintstone. He handles him clean, smooth, without shame. Here's how to spot him... Carlo loves drawing crooked poses with the characters' appendages- the head, the hands, the pelvic girdle- all pointing different directions. Keep your eyes peeled for socially unacceptable (in some circles) wrist actions. He likes to flip the wrist around- have the hand up, then flip down, then twist around, fingers wiggling, taking turns sticking up- it's truly a joy to watch.

He utilizes the butt generously. Remember the old Yogi Bear cartoons? The ones where Yogi bops up and down to bongo beats? That's Carlo. He's always thinking of you. In Carlo's hands, Fred's butt is a sensative emoting creature. He also draws quite a few meaty expressions on the characters, whereas some other animators are stingy with their expressions.

Carlo came from Terrytoons, where he animated for about 30 years. He did Gandy Goose, Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle and all your favorite New York cartoons. His specialty was singing and dancing. Hey, get this! Carlo met young Joe Barbera back in the '30s at Terrytoons and taught him how to animate. Carlo did great stuff for Terrytoons, but I think he was made for Hanna Barbera. His animation style combined with Ed Benedict's designs created a whole new entertainment experience. Count on Carlo to deliver a quality package to you.

Read more about Carlo Vinci

GEORGE NICHOLAS


Click on the image to see a movie of George Nicholas scenes.
George Nicholas draws really well. When I was a kid I'd see his cartoons and say. "There's the good artist." He's the one who draws really solid, almost "pretty" designs. He's also great with the girls. He makes them look cute and sexy. Another Nicholas trait is he likes to have the tongues flop around in his characters' mouths. Like Carlo Vinci and Don Patterson, he custom designs new expressions and poses to fit the characters' moods according to how they feel in the context of the story at each particular instant. This is unlike many animators, who strictly draw their expressions off the model sheets. This model sheet approach is what most cartoons use today, which is why everything looks and feels so generic now. The characters always make the same expressions, rather than act according to the situation.

Mark Kausler, the world's greatest animator, says, "Nicholas has the richest, fullest looking dialogue animation on the early Flintstones shows. Instead of using just a straight up and down 'head bob' formula, he varies it by shaking the head 'yes' and 'no' to the mood of the dialogue accompanied by a shrugging gesture. He also uses a special sarcastic head rotation in perspective for some lines. He uses a unique 'beady eyed' expression on his characters, drawing tiny pupils in Fred's eyes when he's getting an idea or when he's hypnotized by something. He draws big, fat fingers on Fred's hands, especially in pointing gestures, like in the Frog Mouth episode."

Before Hanna-Barbera, George worked for years at Disney, where he animated for Nick Nicholas' Pluto unit.

ED LOVE


Click on the image to see a movie of Ed Love scenes.
Ed Love's most obvious trait is his real cool "upside down curly mouths". Watch when his characters talk. The mouth is also a little bit to the side. His action style is very 'springy'. Mark Kausler says it's because he 'slows out' of everything. That's hi-falutin' animator talk. He has a way of making limited TV animation look like full animation by the way he does his timing. It's very smooth.

Before Hanna-Barbera, Ed had a quite varied career. His first animation job was on Disney's first color cartoon- "Flowers and Trees". He animated Mickey getting stomped on by brooms in "Sorcerer's Apprentice". He animated for Tex Avery in the early 40s on "Screwball Squirrel", "Red Hot Riding Hood" and other classic cartoons. From the mid to late '40s, he worked for Walter Lantz. He animated a Woody Woodpecker cartoon, "Drooler's Delight" completely by himself.

In the early 50s, he did commercials for Ray Patin. A really cool one was for General Mills' Corn Kix. Ed animated the Kix Man, who is made of corn balls. He animated the Trix kids before there was a Trix Rabbit. He animated some of Hanna-Barbera's best commercials from the late 50s and early 60s- the Kelloggs' cereal commercials starring Huck, Yogi, Quick Draw and all your other wonderful cartoon pals.



Recently, John Kricfalusi has been elaborating on these musings at his blog, All Kinds of Stuff. Check out these posts...

Pluto Animator Animates The Flintstones- George Nicholas
The Flintstone Flyer- Carlo Vinci Part One
The Flintstone Flyer- Carlo Vinci
I Want You To Love Carlo Vinci
Carlo Vinci Dancing
Ed Benedict 1912-2006



Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

9.26.08
.

Stumble It!

Design: Mice and Duck Model Sheets

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.

Today, we had a full complement of volunteers, and we digitized more of the model sheets loaned to us by Archive Alliance member, Van Eaton Galleries. The batch consisted of models of Mickey and Donald from various vintages. For more Disney model sheets, see... Reluctant Dragon and Pinocchio Model Sheets and Two Disney Concept Artists.















One of these model sheets surprised me. Take a look at them and see if you can see why. These images are perfect to use to hone your drawing skills in Lesson Seven of John K's $100,000 Drawing Course.

These original production photostatic model sheets are available for sale by Van Eaton Galleries for $50 apiece. If you decide to add any of them to your collection, tell the folks at the Van Eaton Galleries that ASIFA-Hollywood referred you, and they will donate a portion of your purchase price to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

For more Disney model sheets, see... Reluctant Dragon and Pinocchio Model Sheets and Two Disney Concept Artists

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

9.5.08
.

Stumble It!

Design: Natural Forms

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.

Today, I hope you'll bear with me as I get philosophical. (I promise not to get all "hippie college professor" on ya!) Think of this as one of Eddie Fitzgerald's theory posts at Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner.




We scanned an interesting and inspiring book today- Ernst Haeckel's Die Natur als Kunstlerin (Nature as Artist). This paperback book from 1913 is a popular adaptation of Haeckel's landmark book, Kunstformen von der Natur (Art Forms in Nature) originally published in 1904. Haeckel was a biologist and an artist, and he merged both disciplines into a study of natural forms, shapes, symmetries and patterns from every aspect of the natural world.




Natural history studies are beyond the scope of what we do here at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, but this one is an exception. Haeckel didn't just attempt to document lifeforms and their place in the environment... He documented the structures and shapes that are common to all plants and animals on this Earth. His drawings have no indication of scale or habitat of the various organisms he depicted. A jellyfish would appear right next to a single cell animal or the patterns of folds of skin on the face of a bat. The focus was on the form.




Biologists in Haeckel's time thought of man's place in nature much differently than we do today. Haeckel was a staunch Darwinist. He saw mankind as a part of evolution, and a vital part of nature. Today, when we turn on the TV to watch a nature show, we see jungles and tigers, or underwater coral reefs full of fish. There isn't a human being in sight. Many people today look upon humans as "contaminants" to the natural world. But in Haeckel's day, nature was seen in everything- Darwin's Theory applied to the evolution of fish or birds just as much as it applied to the evolution of people. social organizations, business practices or creative processes.




Haeckel saw no contradiction in his role as scientist/artist. In fact, he considered his work to be an expression of his own natural place in the world he was attempting to represent. Instead of approaching the subject from an objective viewpoint, he subjectively and selectively edited what he saw to reduce it to a form that appealed to him on a basic level as an artist. Thus, the scales of a fish become arabesques, and microscopic diatoms become beautiful sculptural forms. Haeckel was using nature's imagery to express his own inner nature.




At the turn of the century, when this book was published, Art Nouveau was popular. Natural forms were incorporated into everything from architecture and illustration to street signs and ornamental patterns on clothing or wallpaper. Today, we have nearly eliminated natural forms from our lives. We live in shoebox shaped houses and drive cars shaped like shoeboxes with rounded edges. We pave the landscape with geometric grids of asphalt and design characters for animation out of triangles, rectangles and circles. We have isolated ourselves from natural shapes; and in so doing, we have isolated ourselves from ourselves.

RECOMMENDED READING

I am going to recommend a few books here from Amazon.com. These three books comprise an encyclopedia of natural shapes for you to explore. Don't copy from them- incorporate them into the way you think...

Art Forms In Nature by Ernst Haeckel



Art Forms From The Ocean: The Radiolarian Atlas Of 1862 by Ernst Haeckel


Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: The Complete Plates in Colour, 1734-1765



I promise you, you won't be disappointed by these books. They may just change your life!



UPDATE

Pita, a reader of this blog sends along this link to a page with all 100 images from Haeckel's landmark book, as well as a downloadable PDF version.

Also, check out Pita's great image blog, Agence Eureka. It's at the top of my blogroll; and I bet once you see it, it'll be at the top of yours too.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

9.4.08
.

Stumble It!

Design: Two Disney Concept Artists

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.

Today, we digitized more vintage model sheets on loan to us by Archive Alliance member, Van Eaton Galleries. (For our previous posting, see... Reluctant Dragon and Pinocchio Model Sheets.) Among the collection were some fascinating early concept sketches by two very unique designers... Albert Hurter and Charlie Thorson.

ALBERT HURTER

Albert Hurter was born in Switzerland in 1883. He came to America during the first World War and found work in the New York animation scene. He moved West and ended up working at Disney as a concept artist. His influence is seen in many of the Silly Symphonies and early features. His strengths were an unfailing solidity of drawing, and an eye for creating situations, not just designs. For more info on his life and career, see Bud Plant's Biography and John Canemaker's book, Before the Animation Begins.

Here are some inspirational designs by Albert Hurter...











CHARLIE THORSON

Until Gene Waltz's book, Cartoon Charlie: The Life and Art of Animation Pioneer Charles Thorson, few people had heard of Charlie Thorson, but once you see his work, it's hard not to recognize his unique style in many cartoons from the 1930s. Thorson was responsible for the first model of proto-Bugs' Bunny and the Porky Pig redesign at Warner Bros, as well as numerous characters in Disney Silly Symphonies and Fleischer Stone Age cartoons.

Here are two beautiful model sheets Thorson created for Disney's "Little Hiawatha"...




I'm not sure who did this next piece, but it impressed me with the amount of detail and refinement Disney allowed his concept artists to instill in their work... I'm sure when this concept drawing was created, no one had any idea how the delicate pastel rendering technique would be translated into ink & paint!



These original production photostatic model sheets are available for sale by Van Eaton Galleries for $50 apiece. If you decide to add any of them to your collection, tell the folks at the Van Eaton Galleries that ASIFA-Hollywood referred you, and they will donate a portion of your purchase price to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

For more vintage Disney model sheets, see... Reluctant Dragon and Pinocchio Model Sheets. Thanks to the Van Eaton Galleries for their support of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

9.02.08
.

Stumble It!

Color: Jules Engel's Color Keys For The Alvin Show

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.

In his wonderful blog, Cartoon Modern, Amid Amidi recently posted some thumbnail background keys by color stylist, Jules Engel and invited his readers to comment. I happened to have a nice little stack of Engel keys from The Alvin Show sitting here on my desk, so I decided to scan them and post them to follow Amid's lead.












Make sure to pick up a copy of Amid's great new book, Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.29.08
.

Stumble It!

Technique: Musical Timing Rediscovered

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.


A few weeks ago, John K posted an article by Milt Gray about timing. If you haven't read it yet, by all means, click on that link before you go any further in this post. Milt explains how cartoons before the TV era were timed to a musical beat, and how musical timing has become a lost art.

Well, almost lost... I happened to be speaking to Mark Kausler about the article, and he mentioned that he had a complete set of bar sheets, given to him by Rudy Ising, for an early Merrie Melodies cartoon- "Shuffle Off To Buffalo". He graciously offered to let us digitize it and share it with you. This document is the "smoking gun" that animators interested in timing theories of the past have been looking for. It's a highly detailed plan for the timing of a typical cartoon from the early days of sound. This isn't a particularly good cartoon, but it gives us a clear look at the process. That makes it invaluable.

I've gathered together all the reference you need to analyze these bar sheets... I've supplied you with frame grabs from each scene to act as a storyboard, and I've posted a 24 fps movie file of "Shuffle Off To Buffalo". My own knowledge of animation timing theory is extremely limited, so I would appreciate it if the professional animators who are reading this blog would share their expertise through the comments link below, or by posting analysis to their own blogs. Nick Cross and Michael Sporn are the first to weigh in with their comments. I'll add links to other blogs discussing this topic as I am made aware of them.

Musical timing is one of the principle aspects of early cartoons that set them apart from modern animation. The perfect rhythm of cartoons is what makes them so appealing and magical. Rhythmic timing doesn't cost any more, in fact, careful planning saves money. "Shuffle Off To Buffalo" was planned down to the frame by two men- a director and a musician- before a single animation drawing had been done. The results are "magical perfection". Modern animation timing requires constant testing and revising by teams of artists and technicians to look "natural". Who wants cartoons that look natural? How many manhours could be saved with this technique? Let's share info and try to recapture the "lost art" of Musical Timing!

RUDY ISING'S BAR SHEETS


These 20 pages comprise the complete "detail sheets" (aka "bar sheets") for the 1933 Merrie Melodies cartoon, "Shuffle Off To Buffalo". This document was prepared by the director, Rudy Ising in collaboration with the musical director, Frank Marsales.

Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 01
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 02
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 03
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 04
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 05
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 06
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 07
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 08
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 09
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 10
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 11
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 12
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 13
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 14
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 15
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 16
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 17
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 18
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 19
Shuffle Off To Buffalo Page 20

STORYBOARD

Feel free to print out these images to use as a visual reference when you're studying the bar sheets. Every scene in the picture is depicted here, along with its scene number.















24 FPS MOVIE FILE


I have encoded this Quicktime movie at 24 frames per second, so you can count frames and compare to the bar sheets. If the movie fails to load quickly, check back a little later. We are experiencing a traffic spike right now.

Shuffle Off To Buffalo (WB/1933)
(Quicktime 7 / 15 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

COMMENTARY AND RELATED LINKS

Comments on this post by Kent Butterworth, Tony Craig, Hans Perk and more

Animator, Nick Cross discusses the importance of musical timing

Director, Michael Sporn provides examples of other formats of bar sheets and a discussion regarding how timing theory morphed over time

Kevin Langley discusses how he is applying musical timing principles to his own work, and offers scans of bar sheets by Bill Hanna and Scott Bradley

Mark Mayerson explains how to use a metronome to time animation

Hans Perk posts lecture notes by Disney composer, Albert Hay Malotte and bar sheets by Dave Hand for Trader Mickey

Timing Director, Milt Gray talks about the differences between the way cartoons are timed today, and the way they were timed in the golden age

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.29.08
.

Stumble It!

Design: Reluctant Dragon and Pinocchio Model Sheets

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.


Today, I'd like to introduce you to our latest Archive Alliance member, Van Eaton Galleries. Mike Van Eaton has been an ASIFA-Hollywood supporter for some time, and he has hosted several fundraisers for the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive at his storefront gallery in Sherman Oaks, CA. His walls are jam packed with wonderful animation art, and he has generously agreed to allow ASIFA-Hollywood to digitize material in his inventory for inclusion in the archive database.

Earlier this week, Mike brought in a box full of Disney model sheets. The Disney Studios was probably the best organized operation ever to produce animated cartoons, and the heart of their production process was the Model Department run by Joe Grant. Concept designs were quickly duplicated and distributed as preliminary models, allowing development at the studio to proceed at a rapid pace. Once designs were approved, they were distilled into sheets full of drawings that captured a full range of angles and expressions. These detailed instructions on how the characters were to be constructed and posed were provided to every artist working on the film.

Here are a few samples of the model sheets Mike Van Eaton generously allowed us to digitize today...

The Reluctant Dragon (1941)






Pinocchio (1940)





These original production photostatic model sheets are available for sale by Van Eaton Galleries for $50 apiece. If you decide to add any of them to your collection, tell the folks at the Van Eaton Galleries that ASIFA-Hollywood referred you, and they will donate a portion of your purchase price to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

Thanks to the Van Eaton Galleries for their support of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.27.08
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Design: Early UPA Model Sheets

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.

A couple of years ago, when Amid Amidi and I were working on Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon, I lent Amid these model sheets to use in a proposal to Chronicle Books for a history of 50s cartoon design. Well, Amid sold the book and has been working hard on it ever since... It's just been released. The title is Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation. (Click on the title to take a look at it on Amazon.) I haven't seen the book yet, but I'm sure it's as good as Amid's wonderful Cartoon Modern Blog. Way back when, Amid promised me a free copy of his book when it came out; so if you happen to see him, remind him to send one to me!

Here are some UPA model sheets from the early 50s...














These last two are from the animated
segment of "The Girl Next Door" (1953)
(See Mark Mayerson's Blog for more info.)


For a pencil test from the Magoo Golf picture, see Art Babbitt's Greatest Scene

If you found this article to be interesting, see also... John Sutherland's Rhapsody of Steel, Artzybasheff's Machinalia, The Alvin Show Pilot Storyboard, Jules Engel's Alvin Show Color Keys, UPA Done Right, Herb Klynn The Shrimp, and Grim Natwick's Post UPA Commercials.

Today, Amid put up a great Flickr set of photos of the biggest names in animation during the 1950s. The picture below is of the UPA staff around the time these model sheets were created. Click through it to see the rest...



Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.27.08
.

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Illustration: Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.

Frank Reynolds is a name that you don't hear mentioned much when artists are discussing classic illustrators. That's a shame, because there is a lot to learn from his work. Reynolds was born in 1876, and gained fame for his humorous drawings in Punch, Sketch and The Illustrated London News. His specialty was caricaturization, and at the time, his drawings were described as being non-specific and even ugly. But with modern eyes, the clearness of compositions, economy of detail, and expressive caricature fit right in with what illustrators like Norman Rockwell were doing in the 40s and 50s. The books of Charles Dickens provided the perfect subject for Reynolds' talents.

In an article on Reynolds (available for viewing at Project Gutenberg) A.E. Johnson wrote: "It is related of Charles Dickens that the creation of many of his famous characters was inspired by a chance remark overheard in the street. A single telling sentence, uttering some quaint sentiment, perhaps in quaint idiom, would set up a train of ideas ultimately resulting, after much meditative elaboration, in a Mrs. Gamp or a Dick Swiveller. The process is not dissimilar, one imagines, from that by which the artist evolves a character sketch: with this difference, that whereas a solitary trait accidentally revealed, was to Dickens sufficient foundation upon which to construct his fanciful portrait, such studies of types as Frank Reynolds excels in must be the outcome, not of one 'thing seen,' but of reiterated observation of the same thing in identical or closely similar guise."















There's a lot to know about this great artist. Project Gutenberg has posted an overview of Reynolds' career. Make sure to check it out. Let me know if you find this useful and I will post more Reynolds illustrations.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.26.08
.

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Filmography: Terrytoons' Catnip Capers

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


Today, we digitized a batch of Terrytoons from the 3/4 inch masters donated to us by John Kricfalusi. Among them was a real gem... Catnip Capers (1940).



This cartoon is among the best cartoons TerryToons ever produced, and for my money, one of the best cartoons ever. It starts out like a typical Terry cat and mouse cartoon, but before long, it's gone off on a wild tangent into feline surrealism and exotica.




The backgrounds in this cartoons are spectacular. If anyone out there knows who laid out or painted these, please post to the comments below. There are times where backgrounds and layout are equal in importance to the animation of the characters... a couple of good examples would be the end of Tex Avery's "King Size Canary" and the St. James Infirmary Blues sequence of "Betty Boop in Snow White". This cartoon certainly fits in that category as well.




Terrytoons have been ufairly criticized as being "flaccid", "predictable" and "boring" in just about every animation history book that references them. The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive has made it a goal to collect and make available as much of the output of the studio as possible to put the lie to those mischaracterizations.



Catnip Capers (Terry/1940)
(Quicktime 7 / 13.5 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Thanks!
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.22.08
.

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Illustration: Gustaf Tenggren's Grimm's Fairy Tales

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books.

This is a real treat... an extremely rare 1923 edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. If you've been following the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog for a while, you'll remember our previous postings: Tenggren's Tell It Again Book Part One and Part Two, The Little Trapper, Small Fry and the Winged Horse, and Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan and Juanita.

































For more incredible illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, see... Tenggren's Tell It Again Book Part One and Part Two, D'Aulnoy Fairy Tales and The Good Dog Book, Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan & Juanita, and Sing For Christmas.

See also... Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, More Norelius and Bauer, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel, Dulac's H.C. Andersen Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.20.08
.

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Filmography: Fleischer's Mariutch 1930

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.

We continue to digitize and master the Fleischer Bouncing Ball Screen Songs for inclusion in our database. These cartoons haven't been seen since they were syndicated for television in the 1950s. Today's cartoon is a real gem... "Mariutch" (1930).

Up to now, the history of animation has been told by studio, or by character. But the true history of animation is the story of the people who created these cartoons. "Mariutch" is important because it vividly illustrates the impact that one man had on the Fleischer Studios.

You might remember that we posted a 1929 Screen Song a few weeks ago... It was titled, "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles"...



"I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" looks very much like the Screen Songs and Out of the Inkwell cartoons that preceded it... stark white backgrounds with heavy black lines around the characters. This was the look of the "slash system", a technique using overlapping paper cutouts which predated painting the characters on celluloid. The sound synchronization in this cartoon is pretty clumsy, and charming as it is, some of the drawing and animation is primitive as well.



This style of animation was par for the course at the Fleischers in 1929. But when Grim Natwick joined the studio in early 1930, the look of the Fleischer films changed completely. A full range of gray tones was added to both characters and backgrounds. The animation became much more fluid and well-drawn, thanks in great part to Grim's expert draftsmanship. Along with his crew of kids... Jimmie Culhane, Willard Bowsky and Rudy Zamora, Grim Natwick proceeded to animate things that had never been seen before on the cartoon screen.




"Mariutch" appears to have been animated almost singlehandedly by Grim. It includes many examples of his experimental movement and timing, which you can see in abundance in another cartoon we posted a few months back, "Swing, You Sinners". Most of all, this cartoon is notable for the early examples of "Grim girls".



Throughout his career, Grim Natwick excelled at animating girls. He created Betty Boop for the Fleischers, refined and expanded upon his girls at Iwerks, and ended up at Disney animating the ultimate Disney heroine, Snow White. In later years, he would recharge himself between scenes by drawing all types of girls, lettering in a suitable name for them alongside the sketch. Here are a couple of animation drawings by Grim from "Mariutch"...




The narration and singing in this cartoon features the first recording star, Billy Murray. He was famous for his dialect songs and made hundreds of records of songs like this for Victor, Edison and Columbia. I hope you enjoy "Mariutch". We'll have another Screen Song for you soon.



Mariutch (Fleischer/1930)
(Quicktime 7 / 15 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.15.08
.

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Education: Willard Mullin on Animals

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.


A couple of months ago, we posted a section of the Famous Artists Design Course... Chad's Design For Television. Today, we are bringing you another Famous Artists article, this time from the Cartooning Course... Willard Mullin on Animals.

Willard Mullin was a type of cartoonist that doesn't exist any more... a newspaper sports page cartoonist. In the days before high speed film and well lit night games, newspapers relied on cartoonists to illustrate the sports stories that photographers were unable to shoot. They did this by caricaturing the players and utilizing team mascots to represent who was on top and who was in the doghouse.

Mullin was not only the greatest sports cartoonist of his day, he was also one of the most talented artists ever to work in newspaper comics. His drawings are dynamic and full of energy and life. His lines flow beautifully, while still defining the solid forms that underly his drawings. When it came to drawing animals, he was unmatched. I hope you find this useful in your own work.








These pages provide just a small sample of Mullin's work. If you can, find a copy of his book, "A Hand In Sports". It's packed with wonderful sketches by this underappreciated cartoonist.

The Famous Artists school is still in operation. Visit their website at www.famous-artists-school.com.

As an added treat, here is an early Mullin piece celebrating the victory of the horse, Omaha in the 1935 Kentucky Derby. Archive supporter, Ted Watts found this treasure in a thrift store and generously allowed us to scan it for the archive. Amazing stuff!


Our friend, Will Finn has been posting some great Willard Mullin cartoons on his site... See Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four

If you enjoyed this post, see... Clair Weeks Animal Studies 1940.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.07.08
.

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Comic Books: Jim Tyer's Funny Animal Comics

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.


Jim Tyer was a one-of-a-kind. He animated for Van Beuren, Famous Studios, Terrytoons and Hal Seeger and drew and wrote funny animal comics. Once you've seen a really good Tyer drawing, you can never forget it. I'm going to let these examples tell you about him...



























Thanks to Kent Butterworth for providing us with these great scans!

If you enjoyed this post, see... Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics; Harvey Kurtzman Comics; Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan; Virgil Partch's Here We Go Again, The Wild Wild Women and Man The Beast. Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper; Basil Wolverton On Cartoon Sounds Part One and Part Two; and Milton Knight's Great Brown Pericord Motor.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

7.31.08
.

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Illustration: Harrison Cady's Bird's Eye Views

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.

Harrison Cady was one of the most famous and prolific cartoonists of the early decades of the 20th century. Although he is best known as the illustrator of Thornton W. Burgess' Peter Rabbit series of books, and the cartoonist behind the newspaper comic bearing the same name, Cady was an active illustrator as well. His illustrations and comics appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, The Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Life, St. Nicholas Magazine and Boys' Life.

With this posting, I'd like to introduce our latest Archive Alliance member, Jonathan Barli of Digital Funnies. Jonathan is hard at work on an important project- documenting and restoring early cartoons and comics in digital form. When I spoke to him about becoming and Archive Alliance member, he instantly understood what we are trying to do at the Animation Archive and agreed. Jonathan has donated high resolution TIFF images of his entire collection to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. He offers a wide variety of fascinating material for sale on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. Please take a moment to visit the Digital Funnies website, and drop him an email thanking him for contributing to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

Here is a selection of Cady's Birds' Eye View illustrations for Boys' Life magazine from Harrison Cady Volume 1...







I will be featuring more beautiful comics from the Digital Funnies collection in the near future.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

7.17.08
.

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Lobby Cards: Terry-Toons Characters

Mike Fontanelli brought by a set of Terrytoons character lobby cards for us to digitize. "It's pretty unusual to find sets of cards" Mike explained, "because collectors back in the 70s would pull out the Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckyl and trash the rest." Terrytoons are vastly underrated. ASIFA-Hollywood is fortunate to have a complete syndication package of Terrytoons on broadcast quality 3/4 inch masters. We've digitized nearly 900 Terry-Toons to date.

Many thanks to Mike Fontanelli for lending us these great lobby cards to scan...










Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

7.16.08
.

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Pinups: George Petty's Ridgid Tools Calendars

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.


George Petty was one of the top "cheesecake" illustrators of the 30s and 40s. He began his career with a series of cartoons featuring beautiful girls and their far from handsome beaus. His work coined the term "Petty Girls" to describe the carefully airbrushed girls with brilliant smiles and sexy poses. He left Esquire, to be replaced by Alberto Vargas who we will be featuring here soon, and became a freelance commercial artist. His girls soon ended up gracing magazine ads and calendars for such unlikely products as Tung-Sol Radio Tubes and the aptly named, Ridgid Tools.

Mike Fontanelli has generously allowed ASIFA-Hollywood to digitize his Rigid Tools. These calendar pages are among the most sought after pinup collectibles, selling for as much as $40 to $50 a sheet. Many thanks to Mike for sharing this with us.
















Here's an extra bonus! The 1947 Esquire Petty Girl calendar...













If you enjoyed this post, see... Bill Wenzel & Stanley Rayon's Girlie Cartoons, Jack O'Brien and Milo Kinn's Girlie Cartoons, Eldon Dedini Part One, Part Two (video interview!) and Part Three, Jack Cole And Other Great 50s Playboy Cartoonists, Jack Cole Valentine, Little Annie Fanny Takes A Trip, Kurtzman & Elder's Little Annie Fanny, More Little Annie Fannie, Biography: Jack Davis, Early Erich Sokol Cartoons, A Passel Of Sokol, and More Sokol, Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi, Early Interlandi Playboy Cartoons and Meet Doug Sneyd.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

7.10.08
.

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Comics: Cliff Sterrett's Polly And Her Pals

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.


Al Capp once described Cliff Sterrett as "the finest cartoonist of them all". Yet most people have never heard of him or his strip, Polly And Her Pals.

Sterrett debuted the Polly strip in 1912. Initially, it focused on a pretty girl, but as the strip developed, Sterrett turned his attention to Polly's family- specifically, her father, known as "Paw" and her mother, referred to as "Maw". Other characters filled out the cast- Neewah, the family's houseboy; Ashur, the dimwitted nephew; and Carrie, Paw's sister in law. Shadowing Paw through the panels is Kitty, the cat.


Richard Marschall produced a pair of books documenting the Polly And Her Pals Sunday pages from 1926 to 1929. This was the prime era of the strip, with Picasso-esque cubist backgrounds and surreal gags. If you see these books for sale, grab them. By the mid-1930s, Sterrett was afflicted with arthritis, and had turned over a lot of the responsibility for the strip to his assistant, Paul Fung. Sterrett let Fung create the dailies without much input, but he supervised the Sunday pages personally, with Fung simply providing the background detail repeated from panel to panel.

Kent Butterworth brought in a stack of original Sunday pages from 1936 for us to digitize. This era of Polly And Her Pals has never been reprinted, so these delicate originals are particularly important. These oversize sheets are twice as large as the platen on our scanner, so we have to scan them in two passes and splice them together in Photoshop. With the high resolutions we're scanning art at, it takes over an hour to digitize each Sunday page. But I think you'll agree that it's well worth it.

Many thanks to Kent Butterworth for providing these great newspaper comics to us... Another example of wonderful artwork you won't see anywhere else.


January 5, 1936


January 12, 1936


February 2, 1936


February 16, 1936


February 23, 1936


March 29, 1936


April 5, 1936


June 7, 1936


June 28, 1936


July 5, 1936


August 2, 1936


September 13, 1936


September 20th, 1936


September 27th, 1936


October 25th, 1936


November 1st, 1936


November 8th, 1936


November 29th, 1936


December 6th, 1936


December 20th, 1936


December 27th, 1936

For another example of Cliff Sterrett's genius, see Michael Sporn's Splog.

For more great newspaper cartoons, see... Milt Gross Sunday Pages and Dailies Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six and Part Seven; Chic Young's Blondie, Rube Goldberg's Side Show; George Lichty's Grin and Bear It; and Harrison Cady's Birds' Eye Views

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

7.9.08
.

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Education: Chad's Design For Television 1960

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.

Remember those matchbooks that said "Draw Me!" on the front? They advertised a correspondence course called "Famous Artists". Everyone made fun of "draw Binky the Skunk any size but the same size"; but the truth of the matter was that the Famous Artists Course was no laughing matter- it was one of the best art instructional courses ever created.

Founded by Norman Rockwell in the early 1950s, Famous Artists had three courses... Painting, Illustration/Design and Cartooning. Each course consisted of 24 lessons in three oversized binders covering a wide variety of subjects. Each month, a new lesson would arrive in the mail. The student would read the program material, complete the assignment, and mail it back to the school, where a professional artist would critique it and offer suggestions.

To design the courses, Rockwell brought together the top artists of the day... Albert Dorne, Stevan Dohanos, Rube Goldberg, Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Willard Mullen, Virgil Partch, and Whitney Darrow Jr, among others. The result was a correspondence course that puts many current university programs to shame.

There were two editions of the Famous Artists Courses. The first was published in the early fifties, and the second was published almost 10 years later. There were differences between the two, especially in the Design/Illustration course. A concluding chapter written by the cartoonist known simply as "Chad" was added in the second edition. It deals with design for television.